Automated quantitative tumour response assessment of MRI in neuro-oncology with artificial neural networks: a multicentre, retrospective study

The Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO) criteria and requirements for a uniform protocol have been introduced to standardise assessment of MRI scans in both clinical trials and clinical practice. However, these criteria mainly rely on manual two-dimensional measurements of contrast-enhancing (CE) target lesions and thus restrict both reliability and accurate assessment of tumour burden and treatment response. We aimed to develop a framework relying on artificial neural networks (ANNs) for fully automated quantitative analysis of MRI in neuro-oncology to overcome the inherent limitations of manual assessment of tumour burden. In this retrospective study, we compiled a single-institution dataset of MRI data from patients with brain tumours being treated at Heidelberg University Hospital (Heidelberg, Germany; Heidelberg training dataset) to develop and train an ANN for automated identification and volumetric segmentation of CE tumours and non-enhancing T2-signal abnormalities (NEs) on MRI. Independent testing and large-scale application of the ANN for tumour segmentation was done in a single-institution longitudinal testing dataset from the Heidelberg University Hospital and in a multi-institutional longitudinal testing dataset from the prospective randomised phase 2 and 3 European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC)-26101 trial (NCT01290939), acquired at 38 institutions across Europe. In both longitudinal datasets, spatial and temporal tumour volume dynamics were automatically quantified to calculate time to progression, which was compared with time to progression determined by RANO, both in terms of reliability and as a surrogate endpoint for predicting overall survival. We integrated this approach for fully automated quantitative analysis of MRI in neuro-oncology within an application-ready software infrastructure and applied it in a simulated clinical environment of patients with brain tumours from the Heidelberg University Hospital (Heidelberg simulation dataset). For training of the ANN, MRI data were collected from 455 patients with brain tumours (one MRI per patient) being treated at Heidelberg hospital between July 29, 2009, and March 17, 2017 (Heidelberg training dataset). For independent testing of the ANN, an independent longitudinal dataset of 40 patients, with data from 239 MRI scans, was collected at Heidelberg University Hospital in parallel with the training dataset (Heidelberg test dataset), and 2034 MRI scans