用纵向内镜图像预测直肠癌复发,提前数月预警,准确率超医生水平。
Prediction of Rectal Cancer Regrowth from Longitudinal Endoscopy

- 采用双注意力机制融合不同时期的内镜图像特征,无需图像对齐
- 提前6个月检测复发准确率达62%,敏感度高达97%
- 临床验证效果接近资深医生,适合肿瘤随访与早期干预
临床试验表明,对治疗后达到完全或接近完全缓解(CR)的直肠癌患者采用观察等待(WW)策略有益。然而,目前尚无客观方法在随访中早期发现局部肿瘤复发(LR)。为此,我们提出时序直肠内镜交叉注意力模型(TREX),通过结合治疗后复诊与随访阶段的图像对,区分CR与LR。TREX采用预训练Swin Transformer的孪生结构提取特征,并使用双交叉注意力融合特征,无需图像空间配准。在两种设置下评估:(a) 在最后一次随访时识别LR或CR;(b) 在临床确诊前3–6、6–12及12–24个月进行早期检测。TREX在检测LR上表现最优,灵敏度达97% ± 6%,平衡准确率为90% ± 3%,且在提前3–6个月(74% ± 1%)和6–12个月(62% ± 4%)的早期检测中均优于所有基线模型。临床医生调查验证显示,其整体准确率(86.21%)接近主治医师水平(87.84% ± 1.28%)。此外,结合治疗前与复诊内镜图像预测治疗反应,取得73% ± 12%的平衡准确率。结果表明,基于纵向内镜图像的深度学习分析可显著提升随访效率并实现更早的复发识别。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Clinical trial studies indicate benefit of watch-and-wait (WW) surveillance for patients with rectal cancer showing a complete or near clinical response (CR) directly after treatment (restaging). However, there are no objectively accurate methods to early detect local tumor regrowth (LR) in patients undergoing WW from follow-up exams. Hence, we developed Temporal Rectal Endoscopy Cross-attention (TREX), a longitudinal deep learning approach that combines pairs of images acquired at restaging and follow-up to distinguish CR from LR. TREX uses pretrained Swin Transformers in a siamese setting to extract features from longitudinal images and dual cross-attention to combine the features without spatial co-registration between image pairs. TREX and Swin-based baselines were trained under two settings: (a) detecting LR or CR at the last available follow-up and (b) early detection of LR at 3--6, 6--12, and 12--24 months before clinical confirmation. TREX achieved the highest accuracy in detecting LR with a high sensitivity of 97% $\pm$ 6% and a balanced accuracy of 90% $\pm$ 3%, and outperformed all baselines in early detection at both 3--6 (74% $\pm$ 1%) and 6--12 months (62% $\pm$ 4%) prior to clinical detection. Clinical validation via a surgeon survey showed that TREX matched attending-level overall accuracy (TREX: 86.21% vs.\ Clinicians: 87.84% $\pm$ 1.28%). Finally, we explored TREX's ability to predict treatment response by combining pre-treatment (pre-TNT) and restaging endoscopies, achieving a balanced accuracy of 73% $\pm$ 12%. These results show that longitudinal deep learning analysis of endoscopy may improve surveillance and enable earlier identification of rectal cancer regrowth.
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