Summary
Objectives:
Lymph node metastasis (LNM) is an important prognostic indicator in patients with
gastric carcinoma. However, the methods that have been established for preoperative
diagnosis of LNM show insufficient accuracy.
Methods:
This study describes the use of the QUality Assured Efficient Engineering of Feedforward Neural Networks with Supervised Learning (QUEEN) technique to attempt optimization
of the preoperative diagnosis of lymph node metastasis in patients with gastric carcinoma.
The results were compared with the Maruyama Diagnostic System (MDS) for preoperative
prediction of LNM, established at the National Cancer Center in Tokyo.
Results:
QUEEN is able to extract predictive variables from a case-based database. The combination
of a development method, a special type of neural network and the corresponding encoding
yielded an accuracy of 72.73%, which is notably higher than that of the MDS. Our system
produced a nearly ten per cent higher sensitivity and around eighteen per cent higher
specificity than MDS.
Conclusion:
Our results show that QUEEN is a reasonable method for the development of ANNs. We
used the QUEEN system for prediction of LNM in gastric cancer. This system may allow
more meaningful preoperative planning by gastric surgeons.
Keywords
Gastric carcinoma - lymph node metastasis - artificial neural network - prognostic
factors - preoperative diagnosis - QUEEN