<p>Preoperative discrimination between follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) and follicular thyroid adenoma (FTA) remains challenging, as imaging and cytological approaches often show limited efficacy. Even fine-needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy and intraoperative frozen sections frequently fail to provide conclusive results. Thus, follicular thyroid neoplasms (FNs) typically necessitate complete surgical excision for definitive diagnosis, leading to unnecessary thyroidectomies for benign conditions or delayed treatment for malignancies. To address this gap, we developed FTC-Net, a vision-language foundation model, to preoperatively classify FNs using ultrasound images. In a multicenter retrospective study of 2421 patients (6477 images) from 14 institutions, FTC-Net was trained on 1462 patients and validated in two independent cohorts (n = 578 and n = 381). FTC-Net achieved AUCs of 0.836 and 0.841 in external validation, outperforming benchmark deep learning models and established TI-RADS systems. It also substantially reduced both total FNA rates and unnecessary FNA rates compared to ACR TI-RADS and C-TI-RADS. FTC-Net has the potential to serve as a non-invasive and advanced tool for the preoperative diagnosis of FNs, thereby improving clinical decision-making and reducing unnecessary procedures.</p>

错误:搜索内容不能为空,请输入英文关键词
错误:关键词超出字数限制,请精简
高级检索

A vision-language foundation model improves preoperative diagnosis of follicular thyroid neoplasms using ultrasound images

  • Shufang Pei,
  • Xin Chen,
  • Hui Shen,
  • Yingjia Li,
  • Kai Yang,
  • Juanjuan Liu,
  • Bin Huang,
  • Xuewei Wu,
  • Ting Liang,
  • Dan Yang,
  • Yunjun Yang,
  • Fei Wang,
  • Jingjing You,
  • Zhe Jin,
  • Wenle He,
  • Jie Sun,
  • Lijuan Liu,
  • Fei Guo,
  • Zhihong Lan,
  • Guifeng Tu,
  • Lizhu Ouyang,
  • Shuyi Liu,
  • Xiaoxiao Feng,
  • Yue Huang,
  • Shuixing Zhang,
  • Zhong Liu,
  • Bin Zhang

摘要

Preoperative discrimination between follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) and follicular thyroid adenoma (FTA) remains challenging, as imaging and cytological approaches often show limited efficacy. Even fine-needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy and intraoperative frozen sections frequently fail to provide conclusive results. Thus, follicular thyroid neoplasms (FNs) typically necessitate complete surgical excision for definitive diagnosis, leading to unnecessary thyroidectomies for benign conditions or delayed treatment for malignancies. To address this gap, we developed FTC-Net, a vision-language foundation model, to preoperatively classify FNs using ultrasound images. In a multicenter retrospective study of 2421 patients (6477 images) from 14 institutions, FTC-Net was trained on 1462 patients and validated in two independent cohorts (n = 578 and n = 381). FTC-Net achieved AUCs of 0.836 and 0.841 in external validation, outperforming benchmark deep learning models and established TI-RADS systems. It also substantially reduced both total FNA rates and unnecessary FNA rates compared to ACR TI-RADS and C-TI-RADS. FTC-Net has the potential to serve as a non-invasive and advanced tool for the preoperative diagnosis of FNs, thereby improving clinical decision-making and reducing unnecessary procedures.