A survey on machine learning system for intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms detection

IPMN cysts, a pre-malignant risk to the pancreas, have the potential to develop into pancreatic cancer. Accurately identifying and evaluating the risk level is crucial for planning an efficient treatment strategy. However, this task is immensely challenging due to the varied and irregular shapes, textures, and sizes of IPMN cysts, as well as those of the pancreas itself. In this study, we introduce a new computer-aided diagnostic approach for classifying IPMN risk levels based on multi-contrast MRI scans. The proposed analysis framework comprises an efficient volumetric self-adapting segmentation strategy for delineating the pancreas, followed by a newly developed deep learning-based classification scheme incorporating a radiomics-based predictive approach. To evaluate the proposed decision-fusion model, we use multi-centre datasets and multi-contrast MRI scans, aiming to achieve superior performance compared to the current state of the art in this field. The ablation studies illustrate the importance of both radiomics and deep learning modules in achieving a new state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance compared to international guidelines and published studies (81.9% vs 61.3% in accuracy). These key findings carry significant implications for clinical decision-making, potentially revolutionizing the way IPMN risk levels are classified. Through a series of rigorous experiments on multi-centre datasets (involving more MRI scans from five centers), we attained unprecedented performance levels with moderate accuracy. The code will be made available upon publication.