In the first study of its kind in cancer, researchers have applied artificial intelligence to measure the amount of muscle in patients with brain tumours to help improve prognosis and treatment.

Dr Ella Mi, a clinical research fellow at Imperial College London (UK) will tell the NCRI Virtual Showcase, that using deep learning to evaluate MRI brain scans of a muscle in the head was as accurate and reliable as a trained person, and was considerably quicker. Furthermore, her research showed that the amount of muscle measured in this way could be used to predict how long a patient might survive their disease as it was an indicator of a patient's overall condition.

Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain tumour that is very difficult to treat successfully. Average survival after diagnosis is 12-18 months and fewer than 5% of patients are still alive after five years. Some patients do better than others, and so the ability to assess objectively patients' frailty and physical condition provides important information that can improve prognosis and help guide decisions on treatments, diet and exercise. If patients have sarcopenia - degenerative loss of skeletal muscle - they may be unable to tolerate surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy as well as patients without the condition. This can lead to adverse reactions to therapy, early discontinuation of treatment, accelerated progression of the disease and death.
Dr Mi said: "Finding a better way to assess patients' physical condition, general well-being and ability to carry out everyday activities is important in glioblastoma, and indeed in many cancers, because, at present, it's often evaluated subjectively, resulting in inaccuracy and a high degree of variability depending on who is looking at it. So indicators that can be assessed objectively, such as measures of sarcopenia, are needed."

Dr Mi and her colleagues from the Computational Oncology Group at Imperial, led by Dr Matthew Williams, looked at 152 MRI brain scans belonging to 45 patients from two different data sources [1] who were diagnosed with glioblastoma between January 2015 and May 2018. The scans, which were taken as part of routine clinical care during diagnosis and follow-up of the patients, looked at cross-sections of the head. Dr Mi and colleagues focused on the temporalis muscle - broad, fan-shaped muscles on either side of the head that are used for chewing food - which has previously been identified as a good way to estimate skeletal muscle mass in the body.

MRI Homepage