New vision of HookEfficientNet deep neural network: Intelligent histopathological recognition system of non-small cell lung cancer.

Background: Efficient and precise diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is quite critical for subsequent targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Since the advent of whole slide images (WSIs), the transition from traditional histopathology to digital pathology has aroused the application of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in histopathological recognition and diagnosis. HookNet can make full use of macroscopic and microscopic information for pathological diagnosis, but it cannot integrate other excellent CNN structures. The new version of HookEfficientNet is based on a combination of HookNet structure and EfficientNet that performs well in the recognition of general objects. Here, a high-precision artificial intelligence-guided histopathological recognition system was established by HookEfficientNet to provide a basis for the intelligent differential diagnosis of NSCLC.

Methods: A total of 216 WSIs of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and 192 WSIs of lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) were recruited from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. Deep learning methods based on HookEfficientNet, HookNet and EfficientNet B4-B6 were developed and compared with each other using area under the curve (AUC) and the Youden index. Temperature scaling was used to calibrate the heatmap and highlight the cancer region of interest. Four pathologists of different levels blindly reviewed 108 WSIs of LUAD and LUSC, and the diagnostic results were compared with the various deep learning models.

Results: The HookEfficientNet model outperformed HookNet and EfficientNet B4-B6. After temperature scaling, the HookEfficientNet model achieved AUCs of 0.973, 0.980, and 0.989 and Youden index values of 0.863, 0.899, and 0.922 for LUAD, LUSC and normal lung tissue, respectively, in the testing set. The accuracy of the model was better than the average accuracy from experienced pathologists, and the model was superior to pathologists in the diagnosis of LUSC.

Conclusions: HookEfficientNet can effectively recognize LUAD and LUSC with performance superior to that of senior pathologists, especially for LUSC. The model has great potential to facilitate the application of deep learning-assisted histopathological diagnosis for LUAD and LUSC in the future.