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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy

This article is part of the Research TopicThe Immunotherapy Revolution in the Management of Gynecological Cancers: From Preclinical Data to Clinical Results and Mechanisms of ImmunoresistanceView all articles

A Multidimensional Data-Driven Approach to Surgical Plan Optimization and Postoperative Residual Tumor Prediction in Ovarian Cancer

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China
  • 2Mass General Brigham, Somerville, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Backgrounds: Ovarian cancer represents a deadly gynecological malignancy, with surgical treatment being a key component of its management. We sought to integrate clinical characteristics and ascites immune microenvironment features into a deep learning model to predict postoperative residual tumor status and assist in surgical decision-making. Methods: 118 FIGO III/IV high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) patients treated at Peking University Third Hospital (2019-2024) were enrolled. Clinical characteristics, surgical methods, and postoperative residual tumor status were collected. Ascites samples were processed via density gradient centrifugation and flow cytometry. Deep learning model was built by fusing clinical and immune data, and its performance was validated under a gradient of feature quantities (5-45 features) to optimize feature selection. Model performance was comprehensively evaluated on a test set (20% of the dataset) using metrics including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score, and compared with traditional machine learning models (random forest, XGBoost, et al). Confusion matrices and probability heatmaps were used for visual analysis.For model interpretability, we presented feature importance and results from SHAP analysis. Results: Our model achieved 70.83% accuracy, 71.21% precision, 70.83% recall, and 70.89% F1 score on the test set, outperforming traditional machine learning models: random forest (accuracy: 64.6%, precision: 65.1%, recall: 64.6%, F1 score: 66.4%), XGBoost (accuracy: 66.7%, precision: 67.0%, recall: 66.7%, F1 score: 66.6%), and logistic regression (accuracy: 58.3%, precision: 59.0%, recall: 58.4%, F1 score: 58.2%). It demonstrated strong performance in identifying high-risk R2 cases but showed limitations in differentiating between R0 and R1 statuses. Probability heatmaps visualized the distribution of R0, R1, and R2 probabilities under different surgical methods, facilitating intuitive clinical reference. Interpretability analysis via permutation feature importance and SHAP highlighted the critical role of surgical methods and specific immune microenvironment features in predictive outcomes. Conclusion: This study developed a novel deep learning-based model to predict postoperative residual tumor probability, integrating clinical and immune microenvironment data. While the model excelled in identifying high-risk cases (e.g., R2), further optimization is needed to improve R0 and R1 differentiation. Future research should expand datasets and integrate multi-omics data to enhance predictive accuracy and clinical applicability.

Keywords: high-grade serous ovarian cancer, Residual tumor prediction, Ascites immuneImmune-Based Cytoreduction Prediction for HGSOCprofiling, Deep learning model, Immune exhaustion biomarkers

Received: 15 Sep 2025; Accepted: 20 Nov 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Yang, He, Yu, Shang, Wang, Sun, Xie, Yang and Guo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Jing Wang, 1252741372@qq.com
Jianling Yang, jianlingyang@pku.edu.cn
Hongyan Guo, bysyghy@163.com

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