Cyst-X: A Federated AI System Outperforms Clinical Guidelines to Detect Pancreatic Cancer Precursors and Reduce Unnecessary Surgery
/ Authors
Hongyi Pan, Gorkem Durak, Elif Keles, Deniz Seyithanoglu, Zheyuan Zhang, A. Medetalibeyoğlu, Halil Ertugrul Aktas, A. M. Bejar, Ziliang Hong, Yavuz Taktak
and 21 more authors
G. Kartal, M. S. Erturk, Timurhan Cebeci, María Jaramillo Gonzalez, Yury Velichko, Lili Zhao, Emil Agarunov, F. Salanitri, C. Spampinato, P. Tiwari, Ziyue Xu, Sachin Jambawalikar, Ivo Schoots, Marc Bruno, Chen Huang, Candice Bolan, Tamas Gonda, Frank H. Miller, Rajesh N. Keswani, Michael B. Wallace, Ulas Bagci
/ Abstract
Pancreatic cancer is projected to be the second-deadliest cancer by 2030, making early detection critical. Intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMNs), key cancer precursors, present a clinical dilemma, as current guidelines struggle to stratify malignancy risk, leading to unnecessary surgeries or missed diagnoses. Here, we developed Cyst-X, an AI framework for IPMN risk prediction trained on a unique, multi-center dataset of 1,461 MRI scans from 764 patients. Cyst-X achieves significantly higher accuracy (AUC = 0.82) than both the established Kyoto guidelines (AUC = 0.75) and expert radiologists, particularly in correct identification of high-risk lesions. Clinically, this translates to a 20% increase in cancer detection sensitivity (87.8% vs. 64.1%) for high-risk lesions. We demonstrate that this performance is maintained in a federated learning setting, allowing for collaborative model training without compromising patient privacy. To accelerate research in early pancreatic cancer detection, we publicly release the Cyst-X dataset and models, providing the first large-scale, multi-center MRI resource for pancreatic cyst analysis.