A multimodal feature disentanglement model for lymphadenopathy diagnosis based on BUS and CDFI ultrasound videos: a retrospective, prospective, multicenter study
摘要
This study developed and validated a deep learning model for diagnosing lymphadenopathy (LA) using B-mode ultrasound (BUS) and color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI) videos.
Materials and methodsA retrospective and prospective study was conducted from January 2016 to August 2025, including 7371 patients (3824 male [51.9%], 3547 females [48.1%], median age, 52 years [9–94 years]) who underwent multimodal ultrasound examinations across six centers from five regions of China. A total of 147,420 key frames were extracted from BUS and CDFI videos of all patients for model training and validation. Besides, patient clinical information was integrated to enhance the diagnostic performance of the model. Model performance was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), accuracy (ACC), sensitivity (SEN), specificity (SPE), and precision (PRE). The clinical practical value of the model was verified by comparing with the performance of independent diagnosis and model-assisted diagnosis of radiologists with different levels of experience.
ResultsThis model achieved AUCs of 0.956 (95% CI: 0.925–0.981), 0.928 (95% CI: 0.884–0.965), and 0.912 (95% CI: 0.863–0.952) in the internal, retrospective external, and prospective external validation cohorts, respectively. In the retrospective external cohort, the average AUC of junior radiologists improved from 0.739 (95% CI: 0.676–0.801) to 0.891 (95% CI: 0.846–0.940) with the assistance of the model. In the prospective external cohort, their average AUC improved from 0.767 (95% CI: 0.705–0.829) to 0.899 (95% CI: 0.853–0.944).
ConclusionThis multimodal video-based deep learning model enhances LA diagnostic accuracy and shows strong potential as a noninvasive, efficient tool for clinical decision-making.
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