5-year Recurrence Prediction After Hepatocellular Carcinoma Resection Using Deep Learning and Cox Regression Models: A Large Prospective Study

Background: Risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) recurrence after surgical resection is unknown. Therefore, the aim of this study was 5-year recurrence prediction after HCC resection using deep learning and Cox regression models.MethodsThis study recruited 520 HCC patients who had undergone surgical resection at three medical centers in southern Taiwan between April, 2011, and December, 2015. Two popular deep learning algorithms: a deep neural network (DNN) model and a recurrent neural network (RNN) model and a Cox proportional hazard (CPH) regression model were designed to solve both classification problems and regression problems in predicting HCC recurrence. A feature importance analysis was also performed to identify confounding factors in the prediction of HCC recurrence in patients who had undergone resection.ResultsAll performance indices for the DNN model were significantly higher than those for the RNN model and the traditional CPH model ( p <0.001). The most important confounding factor in 5-year recurrence after HCC resection was surgeon volume followed by, in order of importance, hospital volume, preoperative Beck Depression Scale score, preoperative Beck Anxiety Scale score, co-residence with family, tumor stage, and tumor size. ConclusionsThe DNN model is useful for early baseline prediction of 5-year recurrence after HCC resection. Its prediction accuracy can be improved by further training with temporal data collected from treated patients. The feature importance analysis performed in this study to investigate model interpretability provided important insights into the potential use of deep learning models for predicting recurrence after HCC resection and for identifying predictors of recurrence.