Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38371418›Full record

ArticlePNAS nexus2024

Training an automated circulating tumor cell classifier when the true classification is uncertain.

Afroditi Nanou, Nikolas H Stoecklein, Daniel Doerr, Christiane Driemel, Leon W M M Terstappen, Frank A W Coumans

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PNAS nexus, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
9citing papers in PubMed
2.3field-weighted citation impact, top 11% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

9 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Review
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Artificial Intelligence for CELLSEARCH Image Analysis.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026
    Article
  5. Review
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.

Afroditi NanouDepartment of Medical Cell BioPhysics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede 7522 NH, The Netherlands.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8682-3133
Nikolas H StoeckleinDepartment of General, Visceral and Pediatric Surgery, Heinrich-Heine University, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 40225, Germany.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3412-594X
Daniel DoerrInstitute for Medical Biometry and Bioinformatics, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Christiane DriemelDepartment of General, Visceral and Pediatric Surgery, Heinrich-Heine University, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 40225, Germany.
Leon W M M TerstappenDepartment of Medical Cell BioPhysics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede 7522 NH, The Netherlands.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5944-3787
Frank A W CoumansDepartment of Medical Cell BioPhysics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede 7522 NH, The Netherlands.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6282-6009
University of Twente · NLDüsseldorf University Hospital · DEHeinrich Heine University Düsseldorf · DE

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Circulating tumor cell (CTC) and tumor-derived extracellular vesicle (tdEV) loads are prognostic factors of survival in patients with carcinoma. The current method of CTC enumeration relies on operator review and, unfortunately, has moderate interoperator agreement (Fleiss' kappa 0.60) due to difficulties in classifying CTC-like events. We compared operator review, ACCEPT automated image processing, and refined the output of a deep-learning algorithm to identify CTC and tdEV for the prediction of survival in patients with metastatic and nonmetastatic cancers. Operator review is only defined for CTC. Refinement was performed using automatic contrast maximization CM-CTC of events detected in cancer and in benign samples (CM-CTC). We used 418 samples from benign diseases, 6,293 from nonmetastatic breast, 2,408 from metastatic breast, and 698 from metastatic prostate cancer to train, test, optimize, and evaluate CTC and tdEV enumeration. For CTC identification, the CM-CTC performed best on metastatic/nonmetastatic breast cancer, respectively, with a hazard ratio (HR) for overall survival of 2.6/2.1 vs. 2.4/1.4 for operator CTC and 1.2/0.8 for ACCEPT-CTC. For tdEV identification, CM-tdEV performed best with an HR of 1.6/2.9 vs. 1.5/1.0 with ACCEPT-tdEV. In conclusion, contrast maximization is effective even though it does not utilize domain knowledge.

Indexed as

automated classifiercirculating tumor celllabel uncertaintyprognostic powertumor-derived extracellular vesicle

Identifiers

PMID38371418
PMCPMC10873494
OpenAlexW4391685254

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.