用多模态模型同时预测放疗肺炎风险并量化不确定性,提升个体化评估可靠性。
Multimodal Deep Learning for Uncertainty-Aware Radiation Pneumonitis Risk Prediction

- 融合影像与剂量数据的自监督预训练+扩散变换器建模
- 首次实现对三类不确定性的个体化量化:随机、认知和标注噪声
- 适合临床决策支持,尤其关注预测可信度的放疗医生
放射性肺炎(RP)是胸部放疗常见且重要的毒性反应,可导致肺部功能损害并降低生活质量。传统基于剂量体积直方图的评估方法和正常组织并发症概率模型难以捕捉辐射诱导肺损伤的复杂空间、解剖及患者特异性因素。近年机器学习虽通过整合多模态临床与影像信息提升了预测能力,但多数仅输出单一风险值,未量化预测可靠性,限制了临床应用。本文提出多模态贝叶斯扩散变换器(MM-DiT)框架,联合估计RP风险并刻画预测不确定性的来源。该框架通过自监督多模态预训练整合计划CT图像与三维剂量分布,减少对有限且可能有噪声的毒性标签的依赖;生成的表征经潜在扩散变换器进一步优化,并转移至贝叶斯预测框架,实现概率化风险估计。引入可学习的标签噪声模型,显式建模因标注不完善产生的不确定性。因此,该模型可为每位患者提供包含随机、认知及标签不确定性在内的综合风险估计,支持个体层面的预测可靠性评估。在两个独立队列中,通过判别力、校准性和不确定性评估验证了其性能,结果表明其能提供准确的风险预测并量化临床相关的不确定性来源。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Radiation pneumonitis (RP) is a common and clinically significant toxicity of thoracic radiation therapy that can cause pulmonary morbidity and impair quality of life. Although conventional dose-volume histogram-based metrics and normal tissue complication probability models are widely used for RP risk assessment, they inadequately capture the complex spatial, anatomical, and patient-specific factors underlying radiation-induced lung injury. Recent machine learning approaches have improved RP risk prediction by integrating multimodal clinical and imaging information; however, most provide a point risk estimate without quantifying the reliability of individual predictions, limiting their potential clinical utility. We propose a Multimodal Bayesian Diffusion Transformer (MM-DiT) framework that jointly estimates RP risk and characterizes the sources of predictive uncertainty. MM-DiT integrates planning computed tomography (CT) images and three-dimensional radiation dose distributions through self-supervised multimodal pre-training, reducing reliance on limited and potentially noisy toxicity labels. The resulting representations are further refined using a latent diffusion transformer and transferred to a Bayesian prediction framework for probabilistic RP risk estimation. A learnable label-noise model is incorporated to explicitly account for uncertainty arising from imperfect toxicity annotations. Therefore, it provides individualized RP risk estimates with complementary measures of aleatoric, epistemic, and label uncertainty, enabling assessment of prediction reliability at the individual-patient level. We evaluated MM-DiT in two independent cohorts using complementary assessments of predictive discrimination, calibration, and uncertainty. The results demonstrate its potential to provide accurate RP risk estimates while quantifying clinically relevant sources of predictive uncertainty.
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