Metastatic Lymph Node Detection on Ultrasound Images Using YOLOv7 in Patients with Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

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Abstract

Ultrasonography is the preferred modality for detailed evaluation of enlarged lymph nodes (LNs) identified on computed tomography and/or magnetic resonance imaging, owing to its high spatial resolution. However, the diagnostic performance of ultrasonography depends on the examiner’s expertise. To support the ultrasonographic diagnosis, we developed YOLOv7-based deep learning models for metastatic LN detection on ultrasonography and compared their detection performance with that of highly experienced radiologists and less experienced residents. We enrolled 462 B- and D-mode ultrasound images of 261 metastatic and 279 non-metastatic histopathologically confirmed LNs from 126 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. The YOLOv7-based B- and D-mode models were optimized using B- and D-mode training and validation images and their detection performance for metastatic LNs was evaluated using B- and D-mode testing images, respectively. The D-mode model’s performance was comparable to that of radiologists and superior to that of residents’ reading of D-mode images, whereas the B-mode model’s performance was higher than that of residents but lower than that of radiologists on B-mode images. Thus, YOLOv7-based B- and D-mode models can assist less experienced residents in ultrasonographic diagnoses. The D-mode model could raise the diagnostic performance of residents to the same level as experienced radiologists.