AI and Cancer Research ── Brain ── 2026-10-23
Brain tumours: treatment, trials and AI
- Abstract
The Brain Tumor Reporting and Data System (BT-RADS) standardizes posttreatment MRI response assessment in patients with diffuse gliomas but requires complex integration of imaging trends, medication effects, and radiation timing. An end-to-end multiagent large language model and convolutional neural network system for automated BTRADS classification was developed and evaluated. Five hundred nine consecutive posttreatment glioma MRI examinations (March 2017-July 2021) from a single center were retrospectively evaluated. An extractor agent identified clinical variables from notes using gpt-oss (OpenAI, 20-billion parameters). A scorer agent applied BTRADS decision logic integrating these with quantitative volumetrics. System accuracy was compared against initial assessments, using expert annotation as the reference standard. Four hundred ninety-two examinations were evaluable. Overall system accuracy was 76.0% (374/492) versus 57.5% (283/492) for initial assessments, an absolute difference of +18.5 percentage points ( P < .001). Cohen kappa between the system and the reference standard was 0.71. The system achieved high sensitivity in context-dependent categories (BT-1b; 100%; BT-1a, 92.7%; BT-3a, 87.5%) and moderate sensitivity for threshold-dependent categories (BT-3c, 74.8%; BT-2, 69.2%; BT-4, 69.3%; BT-3b, 57.1%). The BT-4 positive predictive value was 92.9%. These results support further evaluation of this system as a clinical decision-support tool, with local open-weight inference preserving data privacy. ©RSNA, 2026
Journal IF-equivalent: 8.3 (OpenAlex 2-year mean citedness, value as of 2026-10-22, retrieved 2026-10-23; not the official Clarivate IF)Reference: Jabal MS, Zhang J, LaBella D, Houk JL, Zhang D, Rudie JD, et al. Agentic Automation of BT-RADS Scoring Using an End-to-End System for Standardized Glioma Follow-up Assessment. Radiology: Artificial Intelligence. 2026 Oct 21 [Epub ahead of print]. doi:10.1148/ryai.260234.Checked: Abstract only