Deep Learning-Based Segmentation and Volume Calculation of Pediatric Lymphoma on Contrast-Enhanced Computed Tomographies

Abstract

Lymphomas are the ninth most common malignant neoplasms as of 2020 and the most common blood malignancies in the developed world. There are multiple approaches to lymphoma staging and monitoring, but all of the currently available ones, generally based either on 2-dimensional measurements performed on CT scans or metabolic assessment on FDG PET/CT, have some disadvantages, including high inter- and intraobserver variability and lack of clear cut-off points. The aim of this paper was to present a novel approach to fully automated segmentation of thoracic lymphoma in pediatric patients. Manual segmentations of 30 CT scans from 30 different were prepared by the authors. nnU-Net, an open-source deep learning-based segmentation method, was used for the automatic segmentation. The highest Dice score achieved by the model was 0.81 (SD = 0.17) on the test set, which proves the potential feasibility of the method, albeit it must be underlined that studies on larger datasets and featuring external validation are required. The trained model, along with training and test data, is shared publicly to facilitate further research on the topic.