Predicting pathological complete response following neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer using merged model integrating MRI-based radiomics and deep learning data

BACKGROUND: To construct and compare merged models integrating clinical factors, MRI-based radiomics features and deep learning (DL) models for predicting pathological complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). METHODS: Totally 197 patients with LARC administered surgical resection after nCRT were assigned to cohort 1 (training and test sets); meanwhile, 52 cases were assigned to cohort 2 as a validation set. Radscore and DL models were established for predicting pCR applying pre- and post-nCRT MRI data, respectively. Different merged models integrating clinical factors, Radscore and DL model were constituted. Their predictive performances were validated and compared by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and decision curve analyses (DCA). RESULTS: Merged models were established integrating selected clinical factors, Radscore and DL model for pCR prediction. The areas under the ROC curves (AUCs) of the pre-nCRT merged model were 0.834 (95% CI: 0.737-0.931) and 0.742 (95% CI: 0.650-0.834) in test and validation sets, respectively. The AUCs of the post-nCRT merged model were 0.746 (95% CI: 0.636-0.856) and 0.737 (95% CI: 0.646-0.828) in test and validation sets, respectively. DCA showed that the pretreatment algorithm could yield enhanced clinically benefit than the post-nCRT approach. CONCLUSIONS: The pre-nCRT merged model including clinical factors, Radscore and DL model constitutes an effective non-invasive tool for pCR prediction in LARC.