Prediction of post-treatment recurrence in early-stage breast cancer using deep-learning with mid-infrared chemical histopathological imaging

Predicting long-term recurrence of disease in breast cancer (BC) patients remains a significant challenge for patients with early stage disease who are at low to intermediate risk of relapse as determined using current clinical tools. Prognostic assays which utilize bulk transcriptomics ignore the spatial context of the cellular material and are, therefore, of limited value in the development of mechanistic models. In this study, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) chemical images of BC tissue were used to train deep learning models to predict future disease recurrence. A number of deep learning models were employed, with champion models employing two-dimensional and two-dimensional-separable convolutional networks found to have predictive performance of a ROC AUC of approximately 0.64, which compares well to other clinically used prognostic assays in this space. All-digital chemical imaging may therefore provide a label-free platform for histopathological prognosis in breast cancer, opening new horizons for future deployment of these technologies.