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author Gomaa, Ahmed
Schwarz, Annette
Singer, Ludwig
Dörfler, Arnd
May, Matthias Stefan
Stephan, Pluvio
Sheth, Ishita
Szkitsak, Juliane
Breininger, Katharina
Huang, Yixing
Frey, Benjamin
Schnell, Oliver
Delev, Daniel
Coras, Roland
Höfler, Daniel
Schubert, Philipp
Stritzelberger, Jenny
Semrau, Sabine
Maier, Andreas
Heiland, Dieter H
Gaipl, Udo S.
Wittig, Andrea
Fietkau, Rainer
Bert, Christoph
Corradini, Stefanie
Putz, Florian
author_facet Gomaa, Ahmed
Schwarz, Annette
Singer, Ludwig
Dörfler, Arnd
May, Matthias Stefan
Stephan, Pluvio
Sheth, Ishita
Szkitsak, Juliane
Breininger, Katharina
Huang, Yixing
Frey, Benjamin
Schnell, Oliver
Delev, Daniel
Coras, Roland
Höfler, Daniel
Schubert, Philipp
Stritzelberger, Jenny
Semrau, Sabine
Maier, Andreas
Heiland, Dieter H
Gaipl, Udo S.
Wittig, Andrea
Fietkau, Rainer
Bert, Christoph
Corradini, Stefanie
Putz, Florian
contents Background: Differentiating radiation necrosis (RN) from tumor progression after stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) remains a critical challenge in brain metastases. While histopathology represents the gold standard, its invasiveness limits feasibility. Conventional supervised deep learning approaches are constrained by scarce biopsy-confirmed training data. Self-supervised learning (SSL) overcomes this by leveraging the growing availability of large-scale unlabeled brain metastases imaging datasets. Methods: In a two-phase deep learning strategy inspired by the foundation model paradigm, a Vision Transformer (ViT) was pre-trained via SSL on 10,167 unlabeled multi-source T1CE MRI sub-volumes. The pre-trained ViT was then fine-tuned for RN classification using a two-channel input (T1CE MRI and segmentation masks) on the public MOLAB dataset (n=109) using 20% of datasets as same-center held-out test set. External validation was performed on a second-center test cohort (n=28). Results: The self-supervised model achieved an AUC of 0.916 on the same-center test set and 0.764 on the second center test set, surpassing the fully supervised ViT (AUC 0.624/0.496; p=0.001/0.008) and radiomics (AUC 0.807/0.691; p=0.005/0.014). Multimodal integration further improved performance (AUC 0.947/0.821; p=0.073/0.001). Attention map visualizations enabled interpretability showing the model focused on clinically relevant lesion subregions. Conclusion: Large-scale pre-training on increasingly available unlabeled brain metastases datasets substantially improves AI model performance. A two-phase multimodal deep learning strategy achieved high accuracy in differentiating radiation necrosis from tumor progression using only routine T1CE MRI and standard clinical data, providing an interpretable, clinically accessible solution that warrants further validation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_18208
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Large-Scale Pre-training Enables Multimodal AI Differentiation of Radiation Necrosis from Brain Metastasis Progression on Routine MRI
Gomaa, Ahmed
Schwarz, Annette
Singer, Ludwig
Dörfler, Arnd
May, Matthias Stefan
Stephan, Pluvio
Sheth, Ishita
Szkitsak, Juliane
Breininger, Katharina
Huang, Yixing
Frey, Benjamin
Schnell, Oliver
Delev, Daniel
Coras, Roland
Höfler, Daniel
Schubert, Philipp
Stritzelberger, Jenny
Semrau, Sabine
Maier, Andreas
Heiland, Dieter H
Gaipl, Udo S.
Wittig, Andrea
Fietkau, Rainer
Bert, Christoph
Corradini, Stefanie
Putz, Florian
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Background: Differentiating radiation necrosis (RN) from tumor progression after stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) remains a critical challenge in brain metastases. While histopathology represents the gold standard, its invasiveness limits feasibility. Conventional supervised deep learning approaches are constrained by scarce biopsy-confirmed training data. Self-supervised learning (SSL) overcomes this by leveraging the growing availability of large-scale unlabeled brain metastases imaging datasets. Methods: In a two-phase deep learning strategy inspired by the foundation model paradigm, a Vision Transformer (ViT) was pre-trained via SSL on 10,167 unlabeled multi-source T1CE MRI sub-volumes. The pre-trained ViT was then fine-tuned for RN classification using a two-channel input (T1CE MRI and segmentation masks) on the public MOLAB dataset (n=109) using 20% of datasets as same-center held-out test set. External validation was performed on a second-center test cohort (n=28). Results: The self-supervised model achieved an AUC of 0.916 on the same-center test set and 0.764 on the second center test set, surpassing the fully supervised ViT (AUC 0.624/0.496; p=0.001/0.008) and radiomics (AUC 0.807/0.691; p=0.005/0.014). Multimodal integration further improved performance (AUC 0.947/0.821; p=0.073/0.001). Attention map visualizations enabled interpretability showing the model focused on clinically relevant lesion subregions. Conclusion: Large-scale pre-training on increasingly available unlabeled brain metastases datasets substantially improves AI model performance. A two-phase multimodal deep learning strategy achieved high accuracy in differentiating radiation necrosis from tumor progression using only routine T1CE MRI and standard clinical data, providing an interpretable, clinically accessible solution that warrants further validation.
title Large-Scale Pre-training Enables Multimodal AI Differentiation of Radiation Necrosis from Brain Metastasis Progression on Routine MRI
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18208