Abstract / Summary
Background Accurate preoperative risk stratification of cystic renal lesions (CRLs) remains a clinical challenge, primarily due to morphological overlap which often leads to the overtreatment of indolent cysts. To address this, we developed and validated an integrated deep learning framework that combines interactive segmentation with tri-phase CT feature integration to refine malignancy prediction. Methods This retrospective multicenter study enrolled 434 patients with CRLs from four institutions, partitioned into training (n=195), validation (n=100), and external test (n=139) cohorts. The reference standard was histopathological diagnosis or ≥4 years of radiological stability. For volumetric segmentation, we implemented an interactive ‘human-in-the-loop’ Swin UNETR model. To integrate complementary information across the three CT phases, we then deployed a Tri-Phase-Channel (TPC) Perceiver architecture to integrate features extracted by parallel SEResNet50 backbones from unenhanced, corticomedullary, and nephrographic CT phases. Diagnostic performance was evaluated against the single-phase SEResNet50 models and the Bosniak classification version 2019 using the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC) and Decision Curve Analysis (DCA). Results In the external test cohort, the interactive segmentation model yielded a Dice score of 0.890. For malignancy prediction, the TPC-Perceiver attained an AUC of 0.969 (95% CI: 0.911–1.000), significantly outperforming the Bosniak classification version 2019 (AUC 0.884; p =0.016 ). At the fixed probability threshold of 0.5, the model achieved a sensitivity of 94.4% and a specificity of 96.7%, compared with 100.0% and 76.9%, respectively, for the clinical standard. Furthermore, decision curve analysis indicated that the deep learning framework conferred greater net benefit across a broad range of threshold probabilities. Conclusion The integrated framework showed favorable performance for cystic renal lesion risk stratification. Exploratory pairwise AUC comparisons favored the TPC Perceiver over the single-phase models and the clinical Bosniak v2019 assessment, while its AUC was comparable to that of the previous SETD model. The sensitivity-specificity profile observed at the fixed threshold suggests potential value in reducing false-positive risk stratification. Larger prospective multicenter studies are required before clinical implementation.