The transformational potential of molecular radiomics.

Abstract

Conventional radiomics in nuclear medicine involve hand-crafted and computer-assisted regions of interest. Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have seen the emergence of AI-augmented segmentation and extraction of lower order traditional radiomic features. Deep learning (DL) affords the opportunity to extract abstract radiomic features directly from input tensors (images) without the need for segmentation. These fourth-order, high dimensional radiomics produce deep radiomics and are well suited to the data density associated with the molecular nature of hybrid imaging. Molecular radiomics and deep molecular radiomics provide insights beyond images and quantitation typical of semantic reporting. While the application of molecular radiomics using hand-crafted and computer-generated features is integrated into decision-making in nuclear medicine, the acceptance of deep molecular radiomics is less universal. This manuscript aims to provide an understanding of the language and principles associated with radiomics and deep radiomics in nuclear medicine.