Priority radiomic parameters for computed tomography of head and neck malignancies: A systematic review

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Radiomics is the newest and most promising direction in modern radiographic diagnostics. The number of head and neck cancer studies employing radiomics is increasing annually. A systematic review of recent publications (2021–2023) on computed tomography (CT) of head and neck malignancies was performed. AIM: To present systematized data on parameters for radiomic analysis for head and neck malignancies identified by CT data. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The literature search was carried out in PubMed. The basic characteristics of the selected articles were extracted, and their quality was assessed using RQS 2.0 and the modified QUADAS-CAD questionnaire. The reproducibility level of radiomic parameters selected for predictive models in different studies was assessed. Eleven articles were selected for the review. In most cases, a high risk of systematic error associated with data imbalance in terms of demographic parameters and level of pathologies was noted. RESULTS: The range of RQS 2.0 scores for the included articles varied from 19.44% to 50.00% of the maximum possible score. The decreasing research quality was mainly caused by the lack of external result validation (73% of the analyzed articles) and data accessibility and transparency (82%). Inter-study reproducibility of radiomic parameters was low owing to the wide variety of techniques used for image acquisition, image post-processing, extraction, and statistical processing of radiomic parameters. CONCLUSION: A set of stable radiomic parameters must be successfully introduced into clinical practice. The standardization of radiomics method and creation of an open radiomics database are necessary for this purpose.