Purpose
To compare 2D, 2.5D, and 3D residual networks for pulmonary nodule malignancy-risk classification and evaluate momentum-contrast pretraining, mild augmentation, and exclusion of indeterminate ratings.
Methods
A retrospectively prepared LIDC-IDRI cohort contained 2,654 nodules labeled benign, indeterminate, or malignant using median radiologist ratings. Patient-disjoint splits comprised 1,876 training, 382 validation, and 396 test nodules. Representations included one axial slice, five neighboring slices, and a local CT volume. Each track evaluated a randomly initialized baseline, momentum-contrast pretraining followed by fine-tuning, and supervised training with mild augmentation. Checkpoints were selected by validation Macro-F1. The 2D experiments used three seeds; 2.5D and 3D results were single-run estimates. A separate binary experiment excluded indeterminate nodules.
Results
Augmented models achieved test Macro-F1 values of $0.6134\pm0.0075$ for 2D, $0.6537$ for 2.5D, and $0.5403$ for 3D; the 2D uncertainty denotes population standard deviation across seeds. Corresponding accuracies were $0.6128$, $0.6869$, and $0.5455$. Augmentation improved Macro-F1 within every track, whereas the tested pretraining recipes reduced it. Binary Macro-F1 values were $0.8227$, $0.8664$, and $0.7554$, respectively.
Conclusion
Augmented 2.5D achieved the highest observed performance. Differences in preprocessing, optimization, capacity, and replication limit attribution to dimensionality. Labels reflect radiologist-assessed malignancy risk rather than pathology-confirmed cancer. Code and experimental results are available at https://github.com/CT-DeepLearning-Team/CT-2D-2.5D-3D-DeepLearning.