Identifying Malignant Lymph Nodes of Prostate Cancer Patients Using A Combination of Pre-Trained Deep Models and Traditional Machine Learning Classifiers

Prostate cancer is the second most common new cancer diagnosis in the United States. The prostate gland sits beneath the urinary bladder and surrounds the first part of the urethra. Usually, prostate cancer is slow-growing; stays confined to the prostate gland; and can be treated conservatively (active surveillance) or with surgery. However, if the cancer has spread beyond the prostate, such as to the lymph nodes, then that suggests the cancer is more aggressive and surgery is not adequate. In those cases, radiation and/or systemic therapies (e.g., chemotherapy, immunotherapy) are required. The challenge is that it is often difficult for radiologists to differentiate malignant lymph nodes from non-malignant ones with current medical imaging technology. In this study, we design a scalable hybrid approach utilizing a deep learning model to extract features into a machine learning classifier to automatically identify malignant lymph nodes in patients with prostate cancer.