Abstract
Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) from follicular epithelial cells is the most common form of thyroid cancer. Beyond the common papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), there are a number of rare but difficult-to-diagnose pathological classifications, such as follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC). We employed deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to facilitate the clinical diagnosis of differentiated thyroid cancers. An image dataset with thyroid ultrasound images of 421 DTCs and 391 benign patients was collected. Three CNNs (InceptionV3, ResNet101, and VGG19) were retrained and tested after undergoing transfer learning to classify malignant and benign thyroid tumors. The enrolled cases were classified as PTC, FTC, follicular variant of PTC (FVPTC), Hürthle cell carcinoma (HCC), or benign. The accuracy of the CNNs was as follows: InceptionV3 (76.5%), ResNet101 (77.6%), and VGG19 (76.1%). The sensitivity was as follows: InceptionV3 (83.7%), ResNet101 (72.5%), and VGG19 (66.2%). The specificity was as follows: InceptionV3 (83.7%), ResNet101 (81.4%), and VGG19 (76.9%). The area under the curve was as follows: Incep-tionV3 (0.82), ResNet101 (0.83), and VGG19 (0.83). A comparison between performance of physicians and CNNs was assessed and showed significantly better outcomes in the latter. Our results demonstrate that retrained deep CNNs can enhance diagnostic accuracy in most DTCs, including follicular cancers.
Highlights
Most thyroid tumors are incidentally discovered via palpation by clinical physicians.It has been estimated that the prevalence of thyroid cancer can reach 65% [1] and is more common among females
5–10% of these tumors are identified as thyroid cancer
We discovered that the less complex convolutional neural networks (CNNs) (Inception and ResNet) were slightly faster than VGG in terms of training and classification; overall classification accuracy was nearly identical
Summary
Most thyroid tumors are incidentally discovered via palpation by clinical physicians. It has been estimated that the prevalence of thyroid cancer can reach 65% [1] and is more common among females. Most tumors are benign thyroid nodules; that is, only a small number of them are malignant [2]. 5–10% of these tumors are identified as thyroid cancer. In Taiwan, thyroid cancer is becoming increasingly common with most cases identified in individuals between 40 and 65 years old, and it is currently the fourth most prevalent form of cancer among women, as well as the most common cancer of the endocrine system. The Health Promotion Administration of Taiwan has reported a 9.67%
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