Computer-aided detection and segmentation of malignant melanoma lesions on whole-body F-FDG PET/CT using an interpretable deep learning approach.
Journal:
Computer methods and programs in biomedicine
Published Date:
May 22, 2022
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In oncology, 18-fluorodeoxyglucose (F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) / computed tomography (CT) is widely used to identify and analyse metabolically-active tumours. The combination of the high sensitivity and specificity from F-FDG PET and the high resolution from CT makes accurate assessment of disease status and treatment response possible. Since cancer is a systemic disease, whole-body imaging is of high interest. Moreover, whole-body metabolic tumour burden is emerging as a promising new biomarker predicting outcome for innovative immunotherapy in different tumour types. However, this comes with certain challenges such as the large amount of data for manual reading, different appearance of lesions across the body and cumbersome reporting, hampering its use in clinical routine. Automation of the reading can facilitate the process, maximise the information retrieved from the images and support clinicians in making treatment decisions.