A Domain-Specific Pretrained Model for Detecting Malignant and Premalignant Ocular Surface Tumors: A Multicenter Model Development and Evaluation Study.

Journal: Research (Washington, D.C.)
Published Date: May 26, 2025

Abstract

Malignant and premalignant ocular surface tumors (OSTs) can be sight-threatening or even life-threatening if not diagnosed and treated promptly. Artificial intelligence holds great promise for the early detection of these diseases. However, training traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for this task presents challenges due to the lack of large, well-annotated datasets containing OST images labeled according to histopathological results. Here, we introduce the ocular surface pretrained model (OSPM), a domain-specific pretrained model designed to address the scarcity of labeled data. OSPM is constructed utilizing self-supervised learning on approximately 0.76 million unlabeled ocular surface images from 10 clinical centers across China and can be readily adapted to the OST classification task. We then develop and evaluate an OSPM-enhanced classification model (OECM) using 1,455 OST images labeled with histopathological diagnoses to differentiate between malignant, premalignant, and benign OSTs. OECM achieves excellent performance with AUROCs ranging from 0.891 to 0.993 on internal, external, and prospective test datasets, significantly outperforming the traditional CNN models. OECM demonstrated performance comparable to that of senior ophthalmologists and increased the diagnostic accuracy of junior ophthalmologists. Greater label efficiency was observed in OECM compared to CNN models. Our proposed model has high potential to enhance the early detection and treatment of malignant and premalignant OSTs, thereby reducing cancer-related mortality and optimizing functional outcomes.

Authors

  • Zhongwen Li
    Ningbo Key Laboratory of Medical Research on Blinding Eye Diseases, Ningbo Eye Institute, Ningbo Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Ningbo, China.
  • Yangyang Wang
  • Wei Qiang
    Ningbo Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Ningbo 315000, China.
  • Xuefang Wu
    Guizhou Provincial People's Hospital, Guizhou University, Guiyang 550002, China.
  • Yanyan Zhang
    College of Command Information System, PLA University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210007, China.
  • Yiyuan Gu
    Ningbo Key Laboratory of Medical Research on Blinding Eye Diseases, Ningbo Eye Institute, Ningbo Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Ningbo 315040, China.
  • Kuan Chen
    Infervision, Beijing, China.
  • Donghua Qi
    Daqing Eye Hospital, Daqing 163711, China.
  • Liheng Xiu
    Department of Ophthalmology, West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
  • Yunduan Sun
    Department of Ophthalmology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150001, China.
  • Daoyuan Li
    Department of Ophthalmology, The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang 550004, China.
  • Yahui Xi
    Ankang Central Hospital, Xi'an Medical University, Xi'an 725000, China.
  • Shiqi Yin
    Ningbo Key Laboratory of Medical Research on Blinding Eye Diseases, Ningbo Eye Institute, Ningbo Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Ningbo 315040, China.
  • Feng Wen
    Department of Nephrology, Renal Research Institute, Hunan Key Lab of Kidney Disease and Blood Purification, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University Changsha 410011, Hunan, China.
  • Mingmin Zhu
    School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xidian University, Xi'an, 710071, China.
  • Yi Shao
    Department of Ophthalmology, Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, National Clinical Research Center for Eye Disease, Shanghai, China.
  • Jiewei Jiang
    School of Computer Science and Technology, Xidian University, No. 2 South Taibai Rd, Xi'an, 710071, China.
  • Wei Chen
    Department of Urology, Zigong Fourth People's Hospital, Sichuan, China.
  • Guohai Wu
    Ningbo Key Laboratory of Medical Research on Blinding Eye Diseases, Ningbo Eye Institute, Ningbo Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Ningbo 315040, China.

Keywords

No keywords available for this article.

External Resources

Popular Topics
Recent Journals