Cancer presents a significant global public health challenge, impacting human health on a broad scale. In recent years, the rapid advancement of big data-based bioinformatics has unveiled crucial potential in precision oncology through various omics research methods. The advent of radiomics has notably expanded the application scope of medical imaging in the field. However, due to the multi-level and multifactorial nature of tumor initiation and progression, a single omics information remains insufficient to meet the demands for advancing precision oncology strategies. Multi-omics research has become an emerging trend. The research paradigm integrating radiomics with other omics offers a novel perspective for personalized decision-making in oncology. Nevertheless, there persists a need to introduce more integrated new technologies and theories to expedite the progress of this field.
ObjectiveTo construct a multimodal imaging radiomics model based on enhanced CT features to predict tumor regression grade (TRG) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) following neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT). MethodsA retrospective analysis was conducted on the Database from Colorectal Cancer (DACCA) at West China Hospital of Sichuan University, including 199 LARC patients treated from October 2016 to October 2023. All patients underwent total mesorectal excision after NCRT. Clinical pathological information was collected, and radiomics features were extracted from CT images prior to NCRT. Python 3.13.0 was used for feature dimension reduction, and univariate logistic regression (LR) along with Lasso regression with 5-fold cross-validation were applied to select radiomics features. Patients were randomly divided into training and testing sets at a ratio of 7∶3 for machine learning and joint model construction. The model’s performance was evaluated using accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and the area under the curve (AUC). Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), confusion matrices, and clinical decision curves (DCA) were plotted to assess the model’s performance. ResultsAmong the 199 patients, 155 (77.89%) had poor therapeutic outcomes, while 44 (22.11%) had good outcomes. Univariate LR and Lasso regression identified 8 clinical pathological features and 5 radiomic features, including 1 shape feature, 2 first-order statistical features, and 2 texture features. LR, support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models were established. In the training set, the AUC values of LR, SVM, RF, XGBoost models were 0.99, 0.98, 1.00, and 1.00, respectively, with accuracy rates of 0.94, 0.93, 1.00, and 1.00, sensitivity rates of 0.98, 1.00, 1.00, and 1.00, and specificity rates of 0.80, 0.67, 1.00, and 1.00, respectively. In the testing set, the AUC values of 4 models were 0.97, 0.92, 0.96, and 0.95, with accuracy rates of 0.87, 0.87, 0.88, and 0.90, sensitivity rates of 1.00, 1.00, 1.00, and 0.95, and specificity rates of 0.50, 0.50, 0.56, and 0.75. Among the models, the XGBoost model had the best performance, with the highest accuracy and specificity rates. DCA indicated clinical benefits for all 4 models. ConclusionsThe multimodal imaging radiomics model based on enhanced CT has good clinical application value in predicting the efficacy of NCRT in LARC. It can accurately predict good and poor therapeutic outcomes, providing personalized clinical surgical interventions.
Biliary tract cancer is characterized by occult onset, highly malignancy and poor prognosis. Traditional medical imaging is an important tool for surgical strategies and prognostic assessment, but it can no longer meet the urgent need for accurate and individualized treatment in patients with biliary tract cancer. With the advent of the digital imaging era, the advancement of artificial intelligence technology has given a new vitality to digital imaging, and provided more possibilities for the development of medical imaging in clinical applications. The application of radiomics in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of benign and malignant tumors of biliary tract, assessment of lymph node status, early recurrence and prognosis assessment provides new means for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with biliary tract cancer.
ObjectiveTo establish a machine learning model based on computed tomography (CT) radiomics for preoperatively predicting invasive degree of lung ground-glass nodules (GGNs). MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of GGNs patients whose solid component less than 3 cm in the Department of Thoracic Surgery of Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital from March 2021 to July 2021 and the First Hospital of Lanzhou University from January 2019 to May 2022. The lesions were divided into pre-invasiveness and invasiveness according to postoperative pathological results, and the patients were randomly divided into a training set and a test set in a ratio of 7∶3. Radiomic features (1 317) were extracted from CT images of each patient, the max-relevance and min-redundancy (mRMR) was used to screen the top 100 features with the most relevant categories, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) was used to select radiomic features, and the support vector machine (SVM) classifier was used to establish the prediction model. We calculated the area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, negative predictive value, positive predictive value to evaluate the performance of the model, drawing calibration and decision curves of the prediction model to evaluate the accuracy and clinical benefit of the model, analyzed the performance in the training set and subgroups with different nodule diameters, and compared the prediction performance of this model with Mayo and Brock models. Two primary thoracic surgeons were required to evaluate the invasiveness of GGNs to investigate the clinical utility of the model. ResultsA total of 400 patients were divided into the training set (n=280) and the test set (n=120) according to the admission criteria. There were 267 females and 133 males with an average age of 52.4±12.7 years. Finally, 8 radiomic features were screened out from the training set data to build SVM model. The AUC, sensitivity and specificity of the model in the training and test sets were 0.91, 0.89, 0.75 and 0.86, 0.92, 0.60, respectively. The model showed good prediction performance in the training set 0-10 mm, 10-20 mm and the test set 0-10 mm, 10-20 mm subgroups, with AUC values of 0.82, 0.88, 0.84, 0.72, respectively. The AUC of SVM model was significantly better than that of Mayo model (0.73) and Brock model (0.73). With the help of this model, the AUC value, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of thoracic surgeons A and B in distinguishing invasive or non-invasive adenocarcinoma were significantly improved. ConclusionThe SVM model based on radiomics is helpful to distinguish non-invasive lesions from invasive lesions, and has stable predictive performance for GGNs of different sizes and has better prediction performance than Mayo and Brock models. It can help clinicians to more accurately judge the invasiveness of GGNs, to make more appropriate diagnosis and treatment decisions, and achieve accurate treatment.
ObjectiveTo make a comprehensive review of the value of radiomics for prediction of therapeutic responses to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).MethodRelevant literatures about the therapeutic response evaluation of LARC by using radiomics were collected to make an review.ResultRadiomics had good predictive value in terms of complete pathologic response (pCR) and treatment effectiveness of NCRT in patients with LARC.ConclusionRadiomics, a new imaging diagnostic technique, plays an important role in the prediction of the efficacy of NCRT in LARC.
Gastric cancer remains one of the most prevalent and fatal malignancies in China. Peritoneal metastasis represents a frequent mode of dissemination or recurrence in patients with advanced disease and confers an extremely poor prognosis. In recent years, considerable progress has been made in imaging techniques, with modalities including CT, ultrasound, MRI and PET-CT being implemented to evaluate peritoneal metastasis. However, adequate detection remains challenging, particularly for occult peritoneal metastasis. With the advent of precision medicine, radiomics and artificial intelligence have undergone rapid development and show considerable promise for the early prediction of peritoneal metastasis in gastric cancer, providing a new means of diagnosis and treatment for patients with peritoneal metastasis.
ObjectiveTo review the progress of radiomics in the field of colorectal cancer in recent years and summarize its value in the imaging diagnosis of colorectal cancer.MethodsEighty English and seven Chinese articles were retrieved through PUBMED, OVID, CNKI, Weipu and Wanfang. The structure and content of these literatures were classified and analyzed.ResultsIn five studies predicting the preoperative stages of colorectal cancer based on CT radiomics, the area under curve (AUC) ranged from 0.736 to 0.817; in two studies predicting the preoperative stages of colorectal cancer based on MRI radiomics, the AUC were 0.87 and 0.827 respectively. In two studies about radiomics analysis for evaluation of pathological complete response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy based on CT, the AUC were 0.79 and 0.72 respectively; in four studies about radiomics analysis for evaluation of pathological complete response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy based on MRI, the AUC ranged from 0.84 to 0.979. In one study evaluating the sensitivity of neoadjuvant chemotherapy based on MRI radiomics, the AUC was 0.79. In one study predicting the postoperative survival rate based on MRI radiomics, the AUC value of the final model was 0.827. In one study, the accuracy of the model based on PET/CT radiomics in 4-year disease-free survival (DSS), progression-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were 0.87, 0.79 and 0.79 respectively.ConclusionAt present, radiomics has a valuable impact on preoperative staging, neoadjuvant therapy evaluation, and survival analysis of colorectal cancer.
Objective To construct a radiomics model for identifying clinical high-risk carotid plaques. Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on patients with carotid artery stenosis in China-Japan Friendship Hospital from December 2016 to June 2022. The patients were classified as a clinical high-risk carotid plaque group and a clinical low-risk carotid plaque group according to the occurrence of stroke, transient ischemic attack and other cerebrovascular clinical symptoms within six months. Six machine learning models including eXtreme Gradient Boosting, support vector machine, Gaussian Naive Bayesian, logical regression, K-nearest neighbors and artificial neural network were established. We also constructed a joint predictive model combined with logistic regression analysis of clinical risk factors. ResultsFinally 652 patients were collected, including 427 males and 225 females, with an average age of 68.2 years. The results showed that the prediction ability of eXtreme Gradient Boosting was the best among the six machine learning models, and the area under the curve (AUC) in validation dataset was 0.751. At the same time, the AUC of eXtreme Gradient Boosting joint prediction model established by clinical data and carotid artery imaging data validation dataset was 0.823. Conclusion Radiomics features combined with clinical feature model can effectively identify clinical high-risk carotid plaques.
ObjectiveTo explore the utility of machine learning-based radiomics models for risk stratification of severe asymptomatic carotid stenosis (ACS). MethodsThe clinical data and head and neck CT angiography images of 188 patients with severe carotid artery stenosis at the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, China-Japan Friendship Hospital from 2017 to 2021 were retrospectively collected. The patients were randomly divided into a training set (n=131, including 107 males and 24 females aged 68±8 years), and a validation set (n=57, including 50 males and 7 females aged 67±8 years). The volume of interest was manually outlined layer by layer along the edge of the carotid plaque on cross-section. Radiomics features were extracted using the Pyradiomics package of Python software. Intraclass and interclass correlation coefficient analysis, redundancy analysis, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression analysis were used for feature selection. The selected radiomics features were constructed into a predictive model using 6 different supervised machine learning algorithms: logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, support vector machine, naive Bayes, and K nearest neighbor. The diagnostic efficacy of each prediction model was compared using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the area under the curve (AUC), which were validated in the validation set. Calibration and clinical usefulness of the prediction model were evaluated using calibration curve and decision curve analysis (DCA). ResultsFour radiomics features were finally selected based on the training set for the construction of a predictive model. Among the 6 machine learning models, the logistic regression model exhibited higher and more stable diagnostic efficacy, with an AUC of 0.872, a sensitivity of 100.0%, and a specificity of 66.2% in the training set; the AUC, sensitivity and specificity in the validation set were 0.867, 83.3% and 78.8%, respectively. The calibration curve and DCA showed that the logistic regression model had good calibration and clinical usefulness. ConclusionThe machine learning-based radiomics model shows application value in the risk stratification of patients with severe ACS.
ObjectiveTo explore the value of a decision tree (DT) model based on CT for predicting pathological complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy therapy (NACT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).MethodsThe clinical data and DICOM images of CT examination of 244 patients who underwent radical surgery after the NACT from October 2016 to March 2019 in the Database from Colorectal Cancer (DACCA) in the West China Hospital were retrospectively analyzed. The ITK-SNAP software was used to select the largest level of tumor and sketch the region of interest. By using a random allocation software, 200 patients were allocated into the training set and 44 patients were allocated into the test set. The MATLAB software was used to read the CT images in DICOM format and extract and select radiomics features. Then these reduced-dimensions features were used to construct the prediction model. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, area under the ROC curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity values were used to evaluate the prediction model.ResultsAccording to the postoperative pathological tumor regression grade (TRG) classification, there were 28 cases in the pCR group (TRG0) and 216 cases in the non-pCR group (TRG1–TRG3). The outcomes of patients with LARC after NACT were highly correlated with 13 radiomics features based on CT (6 grayscale features: mean, variance, deviation, skewness, kurtosis, energy; 3 texture features: contrast, correlation, homogeneity; 4 shape features: perimeter, diameter, area, shape). The AUC value of DT model based on CT was 0.772 [95% CI (0.656, 0.888)] for predicting pCR after the NACT in the patients with LARC. The accuracy of prediction was higher for the non-PCR patients (97.2%), but lower for the pCR patients (57.1%).ConclusionsIn this preliminary study, the DT model based on CT shows a lower prediction efficiency in judging pCR patient with LARC before operation as compared with homogeneity researches, so a more accurate prediction model of pCR patient will be optimized through advancing algorithm, expanding data set, and digging up more radiomics features.