Duke University Medical Center, Durham NC
Abstract:The Brain Tumor Reporting and Data System (BT-RADS) standardizes post-treatment MRI response assessment in patients with diffuse gliomas but requires complex integration of imaging trends, medication effects, and radiation timing. This study evaluates an end-to-end multi-agent large language model (LLM) and convolutional neural network (CNN) system for automated BT-RADS classification. A multi-agent LLM system combined with automated CNN-based tumor segmentation was retrospectively evaluated on 509 consecutive post-treatment glioma MRI examinations from a single high-volume center. An extractor agent identified clinical variables (steroid status, bevacizumab status, radiation date) from unstructured clinical notes, while a scorer agent applied BT-RADS decision logic integrating extracted variables with volumetric measurements. Expert reference standard classifications were established by an independent board-certified neuroradiologist. Of 509 examinations, 492 met inclusion criteria. The system achieved 374/492 (76.0%; 95% CI, 72.1%-79.6%) accuracy versus 283/492 (57.5%; 95% CI, 53.1%-61.8%) for initial clinical assessments (+18.5 percentage points; P<.001). Context-dependent categories showed high sensitivity (BT-1b 100%, BT-1a 92.7%, BT-3a 87.5%), while threshold-dependent categories showed moderate sensitivity (BT-3c 74.8%, BT-2 69.2%, BT-4 69.3%, BT-3b 57.1%). For BT-4, positive predictive value was 92.9%. The multi-agent LLM system achieved higher BT-RADS classification agreement with expert reference standard compared to initial clinical scoring, with high accuracy for context-dependent scores and high positive predictive value for BT-4 detection.




Abstract:Gliomas are the most common malignant primary brain tumors in adults and one of the deadliest types of cancer. There are many challenges in treatment and monitoring due to the genetic diversity and high intrinsic heterogeneity in appearance, shape, histology, and treatment response. Treatments include surgery, radiation, and systemic therapies, with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) playing a key role in treatment planning and post-treatment longitudinal assessment. The 2024 Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) challenge on post-treatment glioma MRI will provide a community standard and benchmark for state-of-the-art automated segmentation models based on the largest expert-annotated post-treatment glioma MRI dataset. Challenge competitors will develop automated segmentation models to predict four distinct tumor sub-regions consisting of enhancing tissue (ET), surrounding non-enhancing T2/fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) hyperintensity (SNFH), non-enhancing tumor core (NETC), and resection cavity (RC). Models will be evaluated on separate validation and test datasets using standardized performance metrics utilized across the BraTS 2024 cluster of challenges, including lesion-wise Dice Similarity Coefficient and Hausdorff Distance. Models developed during this challenge will advance the field of automated MRI segmentation and contribute to their integration into clinical practice, ultimately enhancing patient care.