Lebenswissenschaften und Ethik
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Introduction
We present a clinical case showing the real-time detection, characterization and delineation of an early Barrett’s cancer using AI.
Patients and methods
A 70-year old patient with a long-segment Barrett’s esophagus (C5M7) was assessed with an AI algorithm.
Results
The AI system detected a 10 mm focal lesion and AI characterization predicted cancer with a probability of >90%. After ESD resection, histopathology showed mucosal adenocarcinoma (T1a (m), R0) confirming AI diagnosis.
Conclusion
We demonstrate the real-time AI detection, characterization and delineation of a small and early mucosal Barrett’s cancer.
The evaluation and assessment of Barrett’s esophagus is challenging for both expert and nonexpert endoscopists. However, the early diagnosis of cancer in Barrett’s esophagus is crucial for its prognosis, and could save costs. Pre-clinical and clinical studies on the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Barrett’s esophagus have shown promising results. In this review, we focus on the current challenges and future perspectives of implementing AI systems in the management of patients with Barrett’s esophagus.
The growing number of publications on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine underlines the enormous importance and potential of this emerging field of research.
In gastrointestinal endoscopy, AI has been applied to all segments of the gastrointestinal tract most importantly in the detection and characterization of colorectal polyps. However, AI research has been published also in the stomach and esophagus for both neoplastic and non-neoplastic disorders.
The various technical as well as medical aspects of AI, however, remain confusing especially for non-expert physicians.
This physician-engineer co-authored review explains the basic technical aspects of AI and provides a comprehensive overview of recent publications on AI in gastrointestinal endoscopy. Finally, a basic insight is offered into understanding publications on AI in gastrointestinal endoscopy.
Aims
Barrett´s esophagus related neoplasia (BERN) is difficult to detect and characterize during endoscopy, even for expert endoscopists. We aimed to assess the add-on effect of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm (Barrett-Ampel) as a decision support system (DSS) for non-expert endoscopists in the evaluation of Barrett’s esophagus (BE) and BERN.
Methods
Twelve videos with multimodal imaging white light (WL), narrow-band imaging (NBI), texture and color enhanced imaging (TXI) of histologically confirmed BE and BERN were assessed by expert and non-expert endoscopists. For each video, endoscopists were asked to identify the area of BERN and decide on the biopsy spot. Videos were assessed by the AI algorithm and regions of BERN were highlighted in real-time by a transparent overlay. Finally, endoscopists were shown the AI videos and asked to either confirm or change their initial decision based on the AI support.
Results
Barrett-Ampel correctly identified all areas of BERN, irrespective of the imaging modality (WL, NBI, TXI), but misinterpreted two inflammatory lesions (Accuracy=75%). Expert endoscopists had a similar performance (Accuracy=70,8%), while non-experts had an accuracy of 58.3%. When AI was implemented as a DSS, non-expert endoscopists improved their diagnostic accuracy to 75%.
Conclusions
AI may have the potential to support non-expert endoscopists in the assessment of videos of BE and BERN. Limitations of this study include the low number of videos used. Randomized clinical trials in a real-life setting should be performed to confirm these results.
Clinical setting
Third space procedures such as endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) are complex minimally invasive techniques with an elevated risk for operator-dependent adverse events such as bleeding and perforation. This risk arises from accidental dissection into the muscle layer or through submucosal blood vessels as the submucosal cutting plane within the expanding resection site is not always apparent. Deep learning algorithms have shown considerable potential for the detection and characterization of gastrointestinal lesions. So-called AI – clinical decision support solutions (AI-CDSS) are commercially available for polyp detection during colonoscopy. Until now, these computer programs have concentrated on diagnostics whereas an AI-CDSS for interventional endoscopy has not yet been introduced. We aimed to develop an AI-CDSS („Smart ESD“) for real-time intra-procedural detection and delineation of blood vessels, tissue structures and endoscopic instruments during third-space endoscopic procedures.
Characteristics of Smart ESD
An AI-CDSS was invented that delineates blood vessels, tissue structures and endoscopic instruments during third-space endoscopy in real-time. The output can be displayed by an overlay over the endoscopic image with different modes of visualization, such as a color-coded semitransparent area overlay, or border tracing (demonstration video). Hereby the optimal layer for dissection can be visualized, which is close above or directly at the muscle layer, depending on the applied technique (ESD or POEM). Furthermore, relevant blood vessels (thickness> 1mm) are delineated. Spatial proximity between the electrosurgical knife and a blood vessel triggers a warning signal. By this guidance system, inadvertent dissection through blood vessels could be averted.
Technical specifications
A DeepLabv3+ neural network architecture with KSAC and a 101-layer ResNeSt backbone was used for the development of Smart ESD. It was trained and validated with 2565 annotated still images from 27 full length third-space endoscopic videos. The annotation classes were blood vessel, submucosal layer, muscle layer, electrosurgical knife and endoscopic instrument shaft. A test on a separate data set yielded an intersection over union (IoU) of 68%, a Dice Score of 80% and a pixel accuracy of 87%, demonstrating a high overlap between expert and AI segmentation. Further experiments on standardized video clips showed a mean vessel detection rate (VDR) of 85% with values of 92%, 70% and 95% for POEM, rectal ESD and esophageal ESD respectively. False positive measurements occurred 0.75 times per minute. 7 out of 9 vessels which caused intraprocedural bleeding were caught by the algorithm, as well as both vessels which required hemostasis via hemostatic forceps.
Future perspectives
Smart ESD performed well for vessel and tissue detection and delineation on still images, as well as on video clips. During a live demonstration in the endoscopy suite, clinical applicability of the innovation was examined. The lag time for processing of the live endoscopic image was too short to be visually detectable for the interventionist. Even though the algorithm could not be applied during actual dissection by the interventionist, Smart ESD appeared readily deployable during visual assessment by ESD experts. Therefore, we plan to conduct a clinical trial in order to obtain CE-certification of the algorithm. This new technology may improve procedural safety and speed, as well as training of modern minimally invasive endoscopic resection techniques.
Aims
AI has proven great potential in assisting endoscopists in diagnostics, however its role in therapeutic endoscopy remains unclear. Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is a technically demanding intervention with a slow learning curve and relevant risks like bleeding and perforation. Therefore, we aimed to develop an algorithm for the real-time detection and delineation of relevant structures during third-space endoscopy.
Methods
5470 still images from 59 full length videos (47 ESD, 12 POEM) were annotated. 179681 additional unlabeled images were added to the training dataset. Consequently, a DeepLabv3+ neural network architecture was trained with the ECMT semi-supervised algorithm (under review elsewhere). Evaluation of vessel detection was performed on a dataset of 101 standardized video clips from 15 separate third-space endoscopy videos with 200 predefined blood vessels.
Results
Internal validation yielded an overall mean Dice score of 85% (68% for blood vessels, 86% for submucosal layer, 88% for muscle layer). On the video test data, the overall vessel detection rate (VDR) was 94% (96% for ESD, 74% for POEM). The median overall vessel detection time (VDT) was 0.32 sec (0.3 sec for ESD, 0.62 sec for POEM).
Conclusions
Evaluation of the developed algorithm on a video test dataset showed high VDR and quick VDT, especially for ESD. Further research will focus on a possible clinical benefit of the AI application for VDR and VDT during third-space endoscopy.
Even though artificial intelligence and machine learning have demonstrated remarkable performances in medical image computing, their level of accountability and transparency must be provided in such evaluations. The reliability related to machine learning predictions must be explained and interpreted, especially if diagnosis support is addressed. For this task, the black-box nature of deep learning techniques must be lightened up to transfer its promising results into clinical practice. Hence, we aim to investigate the use of explainable artificial intelligence techniques to quantitatively highlight discriminative regions during the classification of earlycancerous tissues in Barrett’s esophagus-diagnosed patients. Four Convolutional Neural Network models (AlexNet, SqueezeNet, ResNet50, and VGG16) were analyzed using five different interpretation techniques (saliency, guided backpropagation, integrated gradients, input × gradients, and DeepLIFT) to compare their agreement with experts’ previous annotations of cancerous tissue. We could show that saliency attributes match best with the manual experts’ delineations. Moreover, there is moderate to high correlation between the sensitivity of a model and the human-and-computer agreement. The results also lightened that the higher the model’s sensitivity, the stronger the correlation of human and computational segmentation agreement. We observed a relevant relation between computational learning and experts’ insights, demonstrating how human knowledge may influence the correct computational learning.