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. 2021 Dec 21:11:805137.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2021.805137. eCollection 2021.

MRI Radiomics in Prostate Cancer: A Reliability Study

Fabrizio Urraro  1 , Valerio Nardone  1 , Alfonso Reginelli  1 , Carlo Varelli  2 , Antonio Angrisani  1 , Vittorio Patanè  1 , Luca D'Ambrosio  1 , Pietro Roccatagliata  1 , Gaetano Maria Russo  1 , Luigi Gallo  1 , Marco De Chiara  1 , Lucia Altucci  1 , Salvatore Cappabianca  1
Affiliations

MRI Radiomics in Prostate Cancer: A Reliability Study

Fabrizio Urraro et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Background: Radiomics can provide quantitative features from medical imaging that can be correlated to clinical endpoints. The challenges relevant to robustness of radiomics features have been analyzed by many researchers, as it seems to be influenced by acquisition and reconstruction protocols, as well as by the segmentation of the region of interest (ROI). Prostate cancer (PCa) represents a difficult playground for this technique, due to discrepancies in the identification of the cancer lesion and the heterogeneity of the acquisition protocols. The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability of radiomics in PCa magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Methods: A homogeneous cohort of patients with a PSA rise that underwent multiparametric MRI imaging of the prostate before biopsy was tested in this study. All the patients were acquired with the same MRI scanner, with a standardized protocol. The identification and the contouring of the region of interest (ROI) of an MRI suspicious cancer lesion were done by two radiologists with great experience in prostate cancer (>10 years). After the segmentation, the texture features were extracted with LIFEx. Texture features were then tested with intraclass coefficient correlation (ICC) analysis to analyze the reliability of the segmentation.

Results: Forty-four consecutive patients were included in the present analysis. In 26 patients (59.1%), the prostate biopsy confirmed the presence of prostate cancer, which was scored as Gleason 6 in 6 patients (13.6%), Gleason 3 + 4 in 8 patients (18.2%), and Gleason 4 + 3 in 12 patients (27.3%). The reliability analysis conversely showed poor reliability in the majority of the MRI acquisition (61% in T2, 89% in DWI50, 44% in DWI400, and 83% in DWI1,500), with ADC acquisition only showing better reliability (poor reliability in only 33% of the texture features).

Conclusions: The low ratio of reliability in a monoinstitutional homogeneous cohort represents a significant alarm bell for the application of MRI radiomics in the field of prostate cancer. More work is needed in a clinical setting to further study the potential of MRI radiomics in prostate cancer.

Keywords: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); prostate cancer; radiomics; target therapy; texture.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Examples of the two segmentation of the two operators. Panels (A–C) represent the examples of segmentation (in burgundy) of the first operator, in the T2, DWI. and ADC MRI sequences, respectively. Panels (D–F) represent the examples of segmentation (in yellow) of the second operator, in the same sequences, respectively.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Intraclass coefficient correlation (ICC) distribution of texture features across the different mpMRI imaging acquisitions.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The distribution of ICC of radiomics features across the different MRI sequences.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The distribution of ICC across the different subclasses of radiomics features in the different MRI sequences. * are the outliers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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