The value of radiomics and deep learning based on PET/CT in predicting perineural nerve invasion in rectal cancer.

Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the value of radiomics features and deep learning features based on positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) in predicting perineural invasion (PNI) in rectal cancer.

Methods: We retrospectively collected 120 rectal cancer (56 PNI-positive patients 64 PNI-negative patients) patients with preoperative F-FDG PET/CT examination and randomly divided them into training and validation sets at a 7:3 ratio. We also collected 31 rectal cancer patients from two other hospitals as an independent external validation set.