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Review
. 2021 Jun;147(6):1587-1597.
doi: 10.1007/s00432-021-03606-6. Epub 2021 Mar 23.

Radiomics MRI for lymph node status prediction in breast cancer patients: the state of art

Alessandro Calabrese  1 , Domiziana Santucci  2 , Roberta Landi  3 , Bruno Beomonte Zobel  3 , Eliodoro Faiella  3 , Carlo de Felice  1
Affiliations
Review

Radiomics MRI for lymph node status prediction in breast cancer patients: the state of art

Alessandro Calabrese et al. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 2021 Jun.

Abstract

Objectives: To create a review of the existing literature on the radiomic approach in predicting the lymph node status of the axilla in breast cancer (BC).

Materials and methods: Two reviewers conducted the literature search on MEDLINE databases independently. Ten articles on the prediction of sentinel lymph node metastasis in breast cancer with a radiomic approach were selected. The study characteristics and results were reported. The quality of the methodology was evaluated according to the Radiomics Quality Score (RQS).

Results: All studies were retrospective in design and published between 2017 and 2020. The majority of studies used DCE-MRI sequences and two investigated only pre-contrast images. The sample size was lower than 200 patients for 7 studies. The pre-processing used software, feature extraction and selection methods and classifier development are heterogeneous and a standardization of results is not yet possible. The average RQS score was 11.1 (maximum possible value = 36). The criteria with the lowest scores were the type of study, validation, comparison with a gold standard, potential clinical utility, cost-effective analysis and open science data.

Conclusion: The field of radiomics is a diagnostic approach of relative recent development. The results in predicting axillary lymph node status are encouraging, but there are still weaknesses in the quality of studies that may limit the reproducibility of the results.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Breast cancer; Lymph node status; Magnetic resonance imaging; Radiomics.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All authors submitted and take responsibility of this original manuscript. All authors affirm that all contents of this manuscripts has never been published or submitted for publications elsewhere. All authors approve the publication. All authors retain the copyright to the publisher. All authors refuse any financial, consultant, institutional and other relationships that might lead to bias or conflict of interest.

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