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. 2025 Apr 29.
doi: 10.1007/s10334-025-01251-5. Online ahead of print.

Beyond Gleason grading: MRI radiomics to differentiate cribriform growth from non-cribriform growth in prostate cancer men

Mar Fernandez Salamanca  1 , Rita Simões  2 , Malgorzata Deręgowska-Cylke  3 , Pim J van Leeuwen  4 , Henk G van der Poel  4   5 , Elise Bekers  6 , Marcos A S Guimaraes  6 , Uulke A van der Heide  2 , Ivo G Schoots  7   8
Affiliations

Beyond Gleason grading: MRI radiomics to differentiate cribriform growth from non-cribriform growth in prostate cancer men

Mar Fernandez Salamanca et al. MAGMA. .

Abstract

Objective: To differentiate cribriform (GP4Crib+) from non-cribriform growth and Gleason 3 patterns (GP4Crib-/GP3) using MRI.

Methods: Two hundred and ninety-one operated prostate cancer men with pre-treatment MRI and whole-mount prostate histology were retrospectively included. T2-weighted, apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and fractional blood volume maps from 1.5/3T MRI systems were used. 592 histological GP3, GP4Crib- and GP4Crib+ regions were segmented on whole-mount specimens and manually co-registered to MRI sequences/maps. Radiomics features were extracted, and an erosion process was applied to minimize the impact of delineation uncertainties. A logistic regression model was developed to differentiate GP4Crib+ from GP3/GP4Crib- in the 465 remaining regions. The differences in balanced accuracy between the model and baseline (where all regions are labeled as GP3/GP4Crib-) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for all metrics were assessed using bootstrapping.

Results: The logistic regression model, using the 90th percentile ADC feature with a negative coefficient, showed a balanced accuracy of 0.65 (95% CI: 0.48-0.79), receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (AUC) of 0.75 (95% CI: 0.54-0.92), a precision-recall AUC of 0.35 (95% CI: 0.14-0.68).

Conclusion: The radiomics MRI-based model, trained on Gleason sub-patterns segmented on whole-mount specimen, was able to differentiate GP4Crib+ from GP3/GP4Crib- patterns with moderate accuracy. The most dominant feature was the 90th percentile ADC. This exploratory study highlights 90th percentile ADC as a potential biomarker for cribriform growth differentiation, providing insights into future MRI-based risk assessment strategies.

Keywords: ADC; Cribriform growth; MRI; Prostatectomy; Radiomics.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interest: The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Ethical approval: The studies involving humans were approved by the Netherlands Cancer Institute—IRBd21-108. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Consent to participate: The ethics committee/institutional review board waived the requirement of written informed consent for participation from the participants or the participants’ legal guardians/next of kin because pursuant to national legislation prior to 25 May 2018 (Opt-out) and general hospital informed consent was considered.

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