Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
Departments of Radiology and Experimental Imaging, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL.
Transl Oncol. 2014 Feb 1;7(1):5-13. doi: 10.1593/tlo.13730. eCollection 2014 Feb.
We examined pretreatment magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examinations from 32 patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) enrolled in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Spatial variations in T1 post-gadolinium and either T2-weighted or fluid attenuated inversion recovery sequences from each tumor MRI study were used to characterize each small region of the tumor by its local contrast enhancement and edema/cellularity ("habitat"). The patient cohort was divided into group 1 (survival < 400 days, n = 16) and group 2 (survival > 400 days, n = 16).
Histograms of relative values in each sequence demonstrated that the tumor regions were consistently divided into high and low blood contrast enhancement, each of which could be subdivided into regions of high, low, and intermediate cell density/interstitial edema. Group 1 tumors contained greater volumes of habitats with low contrast enhancement but intermediate and high cell density (not fully necrotic) than group 2. Both leave-one-out and 10-fold cross-validation schemes demonstrated that individual patients could be correctly assigned to the short or long survival group with 81.25% accuracy.
We demonstrate that novel image analytic techniques can characterize regional habitat variations in GBMs using combinations of MRI sequences. A preliminary study of 32 patients from the TCGA database found that the distribution of MRI-defined habitats varied significantly among the different survival groups. Radiologically defined ecological tumor analysis may provide valuable prognostic and predictive biomarkers in GBM and other tumors.
我们对 32 名胶质母细胞瘤患者（GBM）的术前磁共振成像（MRI）检查进行了研究，这些患者均来自癌症基因组图谱（TCGA）。我们利用肿瘤 MRI 研究中的 T1 对比后成像和 T2 加权成像或液体衰减反转恢复序列中的空间变化，根据局部对比增强和水肿/细胞密度（“栖息地”）对肿瘤的每个小区域进行特征描述。将患者队列分为组 1（生存时间 < 400 天，n = 16）和组 2（生存时间 > 400 天，n = 16）。
各序列相对值的直方图表明，肿瘤区域始终分为高血对比度增强和低血对比度增强，两者均可进一步细分为高、低和中细胞密度/间质水肿区域。与组 2 相比，组 1 肿瘤中低对比度增强但具有中高细胞密度（不完全坏死）的栖息地体积更大。无论是留一法还是 10 倍交叉验证方案，均表明可以以 81.25%的准确率正确地将单个患者分配到生存时间短或长的组中。
我们证明了，通过使用 MRI 序列的组合，新的图像分析技术可以对 GBM 中的区域栖息地变化进行特征描述。对 TCGA 数据库中的 32 名患者进行的初步研究发现，MRI 定义的栖息地分布在不同的生存组之间存在显著差异。放射学定义的肿瘤生态分析可能为 GBM 和其他肿瘤提供有价值的预后和预测生物标志物。
