A deep learning model to predict near pathological complete response for rectal cancer by the diffusion MRI data before chemoradiotherapy

A deep learning model is proposed to predict near pathological complete response by diffusion MRI data before chemoradiotherapy. 624 participants are included in this study with 424 for training and 200 for testing. The area under the curve of receiver operating characteristic is 0.800 (95%CI: 0.735-0.851). The sensitivity is 0.700 (95%CI: 0.568-0.812), the specificity is 0.871 (95%CI: 0.804-0.922). Compared with the strategy that uses both pre-NCRT and post-NCRT data, the method may predict the pathological results at an earlier time point before the initiation of NCRT, which enables a chance to modify the NCRT plan if needed.