Enhancing CAR-T Cell Tumor Targeting via Advanced Computational Perception Networks for Improved Recognition in Heterogeneous Tumors

Trends in Immunotherapy

Article

Enhancing CAR-T Cell Tumor Targeting via Advanced Computational Perception Networks for Improved Recognition in Heterogeneous Tumors

Sennan, S., Sridevi, S., Shree, A. N. R., Babu, K. S., Channabasava, U., & K, I. A. J. (2025). Enhancing CAR-T Cell Tumor Targeting via Advanced Computational Perception Networks for Improved Recognition in Heterogeneous Tumors. Trends in Immunotherapy, 9(3), 252–270. https://doi.org/10.54963/ti.v9i3.1288

Authors

  • Selvaganapathi Sennan

    Hexaware Technologies, Secaucus, NJ 07094‑3675, USA
  • S Sridevi

    Department of IoT, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Green Fields, Vaddeswaram, Andhra Pradesh 522302, India
  • A N Ramya Shree

    Department of CSEn(AI&ML), Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560054, India
  • Kunchala Suresh Babu

    PSCMR College of Engineering and Technology, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh 520001, India
  • Ugranada Channabasava

    Department of Artificial intelligence and Data science, Global Academy of Technology, Bangalore, Karnataka 560098, India
  • Immanuvel Arokia James K

    Department of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Vel Tech Multi Tech Dr. Rangarajan Dr. Sakunthala Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600062, India

Received: 31 May 2025; Revised: 16 June 2025; Accepted: 09 July 2025; Published: 10 September 2025

In cancer treatments, the efficacy of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy is affected in heterogeneous tumors due to ambiguous tumor boundaries, morphological variability, and similarity between tumor and non-tumor tissues in medical imaging. Accurate tumor localization and classification are crucial for optimizing CAR-T targeting and therapeutic success. Traditional segmentation networks struggle with intensity similarity, shape variability, and contextual complexity in heterogeneous tumors. Further, robust classification of tumor regions using limited medical data remains a key challenge. We propose a dual-component Computational Perception Architecture composed of a novel segmentation-classification framework. The segmentation backbone is a U-Net enhanced with a Visual Perception Module (VPM) for ROI-level feature refinement. Multi-Head Self-Dilated Attention (MHSDA) in the encoder to capture multi-scale dependencies. ResNet50 with Dense Attention Modules in skip connections for improved feature continuity. Group Receptive Large Kernel (GRLK) Blocks for diverse receptive field decoding. The classification network utilizes edge-perception, morphological, and positional images, and segmentation maps. Deep ensemble learning for decision robustness and transfer learning to boost generalization on breast cancer labeled datasets. The proposed method is tested on the publicly available PBC and CAR-T datasets from Kaggle. The research model achieved a Dice Score of 0.901, an IoU of 0.856, a Precision of 0.882, a Classification Accuracy of 93.7%, and an F1-Score of 0.915. These outcomes show the superior capacity for precision tumor detection and classification, thus offering a potent computational aid in enhancing the targeting precision of CAR-T therapies.

Keywords:

CAR‑T Therapy Tumor Segmentation Computational Perception Deep Learning Attention Networks

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