MRI‐Based Kinetic Heterogeneity Evaluation in the Accurate Access of Axillary Lymph Node Status in Breast Cancer Using a Hybrid CNN‐RNN Model

Background Accurate evaluation of the axillary lymph node (ALN) status is needed for determining the treatment protocol for breast cancer (BC). The value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)‐based tumor heterogeneity in assessing ALN metastasis in BC is unclear. Purpose To assess the value of deep learning (DL)‐derived kinetic heterogeneity parameters based on BC dynamic contrast‐enhanced (DCE)‐MRI to infer the ALN status. Study Type Retrospective. Subjects 1256/539/153/115 patients in the training cohort, internal validation cohort, and external validation cohorts I and II, respectively. Field Strength/Sequence 1.5 T/3.0 T, non‐contrast T1‐weighted spin‐echo sequence imaging (T1WI), DCE‐T1WI, and diffusion‐weighted imaging. Assessment Clinical pathological and MRI semantic features were obtained by reviewing histopathology and MRI reports. The segmentation of the tumor lesion on the first phase of T1WI DCE‐MRI images was applied to other phases after registration. A DL architecture termed convolutional recurrent neural network (ConvRNN) was developed to generate the KH image (kinetic heterogeneity of DCE‐MRI image) score that indicated the ALN status in patients with BC. The model was trained and optimized on training and internal validation cohorts, tested on two external validation cohorts. We compared ConvRNN model with other 10 models and the subgroup analyses of tumor size, magnetic field strength, and molecular subtype were also evaluated. Statistical Tests Chi‐squared, Fisher's exact, Student's t , Mann–Whitney U tests, and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis were performed. P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results The ConvRNN model achieved area under the curve (AUC) of 0.802 in the internal validation cohort and 0.785–0.806 in the external validation cohorts. The ConvRNN model could well evaluate the ALN status of the four molecular subtypes (AUC = 0.685–0.868). The patients with larger tumor sizes (>5 cm) were more susceptible to ALN metastasis with KH image scores of 0.527–0.827. Data Conclusion A ConvRNN model outperformed traditional models for determining the ALN status in patients with BC. Level of Evidence 3 Technical Efficacy Stage 2