Multitask radioclinical decision stratification in non-metastatic colon cancer: integrating MMR status, pT staging, and high-risk pathological factors.
Authors
Affiliations (5)
Affiliations (5)
- Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Hospital, Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, China.
- Precision Imaging and Intelligent Analysis Key Laboratory of Luzhou, Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, China.
- Department of Oncology, The Affiliated Hospital, Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, China.
- Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Hospital, Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, China. [email protected].
- Precision Imaging and Intelligent Analysis Key Laboratory of Luzhou, Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, China. [email protected].
Abstract
Constructing a multi-task global decision support system based on preoperative enhanced CT features to predict the mismatch repair (MMR) status, T stage, and pathological risk factors (e.g., histological differentiation, lymphovascular invasion) for patients with non-metastatic colon cancer. 372 eligible non-metastatic colon cancer (NMCC) participants (training cohort: n = 260; testing cohort: n = 112) were enrolled from two institutions. The 34 features (imaging features: n = 27; clinical features: n = 7) were subjected to feature selection using LASSO, Boruta, ReliefF, mRMR, and XGBoost-RFE, respectively. In each of the three categories-MMR, pT staging, and pathological risk factors-four features were selected to construct the total feature set. Subsequently, the multitask model was built with 14 machine learning algorithms. The predictive performance of the machine model was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The final feature set for constructing the model is based on the mRMR feature screening method. For the final MMR classification, pT staging, and pathological risk factors, SVC, Bernoulli NB, and Decision Tree algorithm were selected respectively, with AUC scores of 0.80 [95% CI 0.71-0.89], 0.82 [95% CI 0.71-0.94], and 0.85 [95% CI 0.77-0.93] on the test set. Furthermore, a direct multiclass model constructed using the total feature set resulted in an average AUC of 0.77 across four management plans in the test set. The multi-task machine learning model proposed in this study enables non-invasive and precise preoperative stratification of patients with NMCC based on MMR status, pT stage, and pathological risk factors. This predictive tool demonstrates significant potential in facilitating preoperative risk stratification and guiding individualized therapeutic strategies.