Department of Hospital Pathology, The Catholic University of Korea College of Medicine, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea.
AI Team, DeepNoid Inc., Seoul 08376, Republic of Korea.
Cells. 2023 Jul 13;12(14):1847. doi: 10.3390/cells12141847.
A Pleural effusion cytology is vital for treating metastatic breast cancer; however, concerns have arisen regarding the low accuracy and inter-observer variability in cytologic diagnosis. Although artificial intelligence-based image analysis has shown promise in cytopathology research, its application in diagnosing breast cancer in pleural fluid remains unexplored. To overcome these limitations, we evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of an artificial intelligence-based model using a large collection of cytopathological slides, to detect the malignant pleural effusion cytology associated with breast cancer. This study includes a total of 569 cytological slides of malignant pleural effusion of metastatic breast cancer from various institutions. We extracted 34,221 augmented image patches from whole-slide images and trained and validated a deep convolutional neural network model (DCNN) (Inception-ResNet-V2) with the images. Using this model, we classified 845 randomly selected patches, which were reviewed by three pathologists to compare their accuracy. The DCNN model outperforms the pathologists by demonstrating higher accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity compared to the pathologists (81.1% vs. 68.7%, 95.0% vs. 72.5%, and 98.6% vs. 88.9%, respectively). The pathologists reviewed the discordant cases of DCNN. After re-examination, the average accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of the pathologists improved to 87.9, 80.2, and 95.7%, respectively. This study shows that DCNN can accurately diagnose malignant pleural effusion cytology in breast cancer and has the potential to support pathologists.
胸腔积液细胞学检查对于治疗转移性乳腺癌至关重要;然而,细胞学诊断的准确性低和观察者间变异性大的问题引起了关注。尽管基于人工智能的图像分析在细胞病理学研究中显示出了前景,但它在诊断胸腔积液中的乳腺癌方面的应用尚未得到探索。为了克服这些局限性,我们使用大量细胞学幻灯片评估了基于人工智能的模型的诊断准确性,以检测与乳腺癌相关的恶性胸腔积液细胞学。这项研究共包括来自不同机构的 569 张转移性乳腺癌恶性胸腔积液的细胞学幻灯片。我们从全幻灯片图像中提取了 34221 个增强图像补丁,并使用这些图像对深度卷积神经网络模型(DCNN)(Inception-ResNet-V2)进行了训练和验证。使用该模型,我们对 845 个随机选择的补丁进行了分类,由三名病理学家对这些补丁进行了回顾,以比较他们的准确性。与病理学家相比,DCNN 模型表现出更高的准确性、灵敏度和特异性(分别为 81.1%、95.0%和 98.6%对 68.7%、72.5%和 88.9%)。病理学家对 DCNN 不一致的病例进行了复查。复查后,病理学家的平均准确性、灵敏度和特异性分别提高到 87.9%、80.2%和 95.7%。这项研究表明,DCNN 可以准确诊断乳腺癌中的恶性胸腔积液细胞学,并且有可能为病理学家提供支持。