Classification of clinical significance of MRI prostate findings using 3D convolutional neural networks

Prostate cancer (PCa) remains a leading cause of cancer mortality among American men. Multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) is widely used to assist with detection of PCa and characterization of its aggressiveness. Computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) of PCa in MRI can be used as clinical decision support system to aid radiologists in interpretation and reporting of mpMRI. We report on the development of a convolution neural network (CNN) model to support CADx in PCa based on the appearance of prostate tissue in mpMRI, conducted as part of the SPIE-AAPM-NCI PROSTATEx challenge. The performance of different combinations of mpMRI inputs to CNN was assessed and the best result was achieved using DWI and DCE-MRI modalities together with the zonal information of the finding. On the test set, the model achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.80.