Frontiers in Neuroscience (Jan 2023)

An attention-based deep learning network for lung nodule malignancy discrimination

  • Gang Liu,
  • Fei Liu,
  • Jun Gu,
  • Xu Mao,
  • XiaoTing Xie,
  • Jingyao Sang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.1106937
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16

Abstract

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IntroductionEffective classification of lung cancers plays a vital role in lung tumor diagnosis and subsequent treatments. However, classification of benign and malignant lung nodules remains inaccurate.MethodsThis study proposes a novel multimodal attention-based 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) which combines computed tomography (CT) imaging features and clinical information to classify benign and malignant nodules.ResultsAn average diagnostic sensitivity of 96.2% for malignant nodules and an average accuracy of 81.6% for classification of benign and malignant nodules were achieved in our algorithm, exceeding results achieved from traditional ResNet network (sensitivity of 89% and accuracy of 80%) and VGG network (sensitivity of 78% and accuracy of 73.1%).DiscussionThe proposed deep learning (DL) model could effectively distinguish benign and malignant nodules with higher precision.

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