Skip to main content

LUP Student Papers

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

A deep learning approach for predicting outcomes of triple-negative breast cancer

Larsson, Arvid LU (2021) In Master’s Theses in Mathematical Sciences FMAM05 20202
Mathematics (Faculty of Engineering)
Abstract
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Triple-negative breast cancer affects 10-20% of breast cancer patients and is associated with an especially bad prognosis. Today, tissue slides are assessed manually by a clinician to set a prognosis. However, the prediction of outcomes could possibly be improved using machine learning. This work investigates various machine learning techniques for the task. In particular, a U-Net was trained on public data and was used to detect cells in microscopic images of H&E-stained triple-negative breast cancer tissue. The detected cells were then classified using logistic regression. The detected cells served as a basis for the prediction of local relapse, distant relapse, and overall fatality in a... (More)
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Triple-negative breast cancer affects 10-20% of breast cancer patients and is associated with an especially bad prognosis. Today, tissue slides are assessed manually by a clinician to set a prognosis. However, the prediction of outcomes could possibly be improved using machine learning. This work investigates various machine learning techniques for the task. In particular, a U-Net was trained on public data and was used to detect cells in microscopic images of H&E-stained triple-negative breast cancer tissue. The detected cells were then classified using logistic regression. The detected cells served as a basis for the prediction of local relapse, distant relapse, and overall fatality in a cohort of 155 patients diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. The accuracy of models fitted to features extracted using machine learning was compared to the accuracy of models fitted to features estimated by a clinician. The features extracted using machine learning was found to yield as good, or better, predictions compared to estimated features. A high number of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes was associated with a better prognosis. This shows that machine learning can be used to find biomarkers in microscopic tissue images and use these to predict outcomes in cancer patients. The source code used in this work is published on Github: https://github.com/karvla/histosnet (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Larsson, Arvid LU
supervisor
organization
course
FMAM05 20202
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
publication/series
Master’s Theses in Mathematical Sciences
report number
LUTFMA-3435-2020
ISSN
1404-6342
other publication id
2020:E88
language
English
id
9037239
date added to LUP
2021-01-28 11:33:52
date last changed
2021-01-28 11:33:52
@misc{9037239,
  abstract     = {{Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Triple-negative breast cancer affects 10-20% of breast cancer patients and is associated with an especially bad prognosis. Today, tissue slides are assessed manually by a clinician to set a prognosis. However, the prediction of outcomes could possibly be improved using machine learning. This work investigates various machine learning techniques for the task. In particular, a U-Net was trained on public data and was used to detect cells in microscopic images of H&E-stained triple-negative breast cancer tissue. The detected cells were then classified using logistic regression. The detected cells served as a basis for the prediction of local relapse, distant relapse, and overall fatality in a cohort of 155 patients diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. The accuracy of models fitted to features extracted using machine learning was compared to the accuracy of models fitted to features estimated by a clinician. The features extracted using machine learning was found to yield as good, or better, predictions compared to estimated features. A high number of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes was associated with a better prognosis. This shows that machine learning can be used to find biomarkers in microscopic tissue images and use these to predict outcomes in cancer patients. The source code used in this work is published on Github: https://github.com/karvla/histosnet}},
  author       = {{Larsson, Arvid}},
  issn         = {{1404-6342}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  series       = {{Master’s Theses in Mathematical Sciences}},
  title        = {{A deep learning approach for predicting outcomes of triple-negative breast cancer}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}