Machine Learning Prediction of Excess Relative Risk for Radiation-Induced Solid Thyroid Cancer Among Nuclear Medicine Healthcare Professionals: A Computational Modeling Study

Abstract

Background: Nuclear medicine healthcare professionals (NMHP) sustain chronic occupational exposure to iodine-131 (I-131), conferring an elevated risk of radiation-induced solid thyroid cancer. Established radiobiological prediction tools derive risk coefficients from atomic bomb survivor data but are not configured for rapid individualized risk assessment in occupational exposure settings. This study examined whether machine learning algorithms can serve as high-precision computational surrogates for excess relative risk estimation in NMHP. Aim: The study aimed to (i) develop and validate three machine learning algorithms for predicting the excess relative risk per unit absorbed dose for radiation-induced solid thyroid cancer (ERR/Gy.RST), (ii) characterize relationships between dosimetric and demographic features and predicted risk, and (iii) identify the optimal algorithm for deployment in occupational health surveillance. Methods: A dataset of 4657 observations was constructed from Life Span Study-derived ERR/Gy parameters, adapted to occupational low-dose conditions, using a dose-and-dose-rate effectiveness factor of 2.0, per ICRP Publication 103. Five features (gender, age at exposure, current age, distance from the I-131 source, and cumulative absorbed dose in the thyroid) were used to train a decision tree regressor (dtcr), a random forest regressor (rfr), and a multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network algorithm. Results: Cumulative absorbed dose in the thyroid correlated positively with ERR/Gy.RST (r = 0.63, p < 0.01), while radiation source distance demonstrated a strong inverse association (r = −0.38, p < 0.01). The MLP algorithm achieved R2 score = 0.999, MSE = 0.002, and MAE = 0.010, substantially outperforming the rfr (R2 score = 0.700, MSE = 0.410, MAE = 0.295) and the dtcr (R2 score = 0.510, MSE = 0.654, MAE = 0.289). Conclusions: The MLP algorithm provides a high-fidelity surrogate for established ERR/Gy.RST projection tools in the NMHP context, enabling computationally efficient, feature-integrated occupational radiation-induced thyroid cancer risk quantification. These findings suggest that machine learning-based surrogate modeling is a practical, scalable complement for occupational health practitioners and radiation protection officers to support individualized surveillance of radiation-induced thyroid cancer risk in nuclear medicine departments.