Distinguishing fibrosis/necrosis from teratoma or viable disease in the retroperitoneum in post-chemotherapy, nonseminomatous testicular germ cell tumor using quantitative CT texture analysis.

Abstract

563 Background: In metastatic nonseminomatous testicular germ cell tumor (NSGCT), post-chemotherapy retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (PC-RPLND) is indicated for residual masses > 1 cm because of these 45% will be fibrosis/necrosis, 45% will be teratoma and 15% will be viable malignancy. There is no imaging test that reliably distinguishes lymph nodes (LNs) with tumor (teratoma or malignancy) from LNs with fibrosis/necrosis. We evaluated whether quantitative CT texture analysis (TA) could make this differentiation. Methods: Pre- and post-chemotherapy CTs (all same phase and slice thickness) were reviewed in 22 NSGCT patients with RP LNs > 1 cm post chemotherapy. After manual segmentation of RP LNs on a 3D workstation, 187 TA metrics were derived, using 2D/3D gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), 2D/3D gray-level difference matrix (GLDM), and spectral analysis. Metrics were derived 2 ways: from post-chemotherapy CTs alone, and also as a difference between pre- and post-chemotherapy CTs, resulting in 374 metrics. PC-RPLND pathology was correlated with CT data at 88 LN stations in these 22 patients. Results: 15 imaging metrics showed a significant difference (p ≤ 0.05) between LN stations with only fibrosis/necrosis and those with teratoma or viable tumor. Seven were derived from the difference between pre- and post-chemotherapy CTs: 4 using a 2D GLCM (coronal standard deviation, coronal square root of variance, coronal mean, and coronal sum of average), and 3 using a 2D GLDM (axial variance, axial square root of variance, and coronal variance). The other 8 were derived from post-chemotherapy CTs alone: 7 using a 2D GLCM (sagittal square root of variance, sagittal standard deviation, coronal square root of variance, coronal mean, coronal standard deviation, coronal sum of average, and coronal entropy) and 1 using a 2D GLDM (sagittal sum entropy). Conclusions: CT TA shows promise in differentiating necrosis from teratoma or viable tumor in RP LNs in post-chemotherapy NSGCT. A larger study is needed to further test this method, towards a long-term goal of potentially allowing some patients to avoid PC-RPLND.