Abstract
Objective: Accurate staging is of great importance in treatment selection for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). The aims of this study were to construct radiomic models of NPC staging based on positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance (MR) images and to investigate the correlation between metabolic parameters and radiomic features.Methods: A total of 100 consecutive cases of NPC (70 in training and 30 in the testing cohort) with undifferentiated carcinoma confirmed pathologically were recruited. Metabolic parameters of the local lesions of NPC were measured. A total of 396 radiomic features based on PET and MRI images were calculated [including histogram, Haralick, shape factor, gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), and run length matrix (RLM)] and selected [using maximum relevance and minimum redundancy (mRMR) and least shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO)], respectively. The logistic regression models were established according to these features. Finally, the relationship between the metabolic parameters and radiomic features was analyzed.Results: We selected the nine most relevant radiomic features (six from MR images and three from PET images) from local NPC lesions. In the PET model, the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity, and the specificity of the training group were 0.84, 0.75, 0.90, and 0.69, respectively. In the MR model, those metrics were 0.85, 0.83, 0.75, and 0.86, respectively. Pearson's correlation analysis showed that the metabolic parameters had different degrees of correlation with the selected radiomic features.Conclusion: The PET and MR radiomic models were helpful in the diagnosis of NPC staging. There were correlations between the metabolic parameters and radiomic features of primary NPC based on PET/MR. In the future, PET/MR-based radiomic models, with further improvement and validation, can be a more useful and economical tool for predicting local invasion and distant metastasis of NPC.
Highlights
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a special tumor of the head and neck which is the main characteristic disease in South Asia [1]
The results showed that the constructed PET and MR radiomic models had high diagnostic performance for NPC staging, and there was a certain correlation between the metabolic parameters and some radiomic features
Our study showed that the metabolic parameters had different degrees of correlation with the selected radiomic features
Summary
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a special tumor of the head and neck which is the main characteristic disease in South Asia [1]. Radiomics models based on 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could provide additional useful information for NPC staging [2]. The study showed that, for tumor staging of NPC, PET/MR improved the accuracy of head and neck tumor detection and could better show the mapping tumor extension, especially the intracranial invasion, than PET/CT. Cheng et al [4] performed PET/CT-MRI scans on 35 patients with NPC. Some studies have shown that the combination of PET and MRI images and the comprehensive analysis of the molecular metabolism and microstructure characteristics of the tumors are of great value in the differential diagnosis and prognosis analysis of tumors [5, 6].
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