CT-texture analysis of subsolid nodules for differentiating invasive from in-situ and minimally invasive lung adenocarcinoma subtypes.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of computed tomography-texture analysis (CTTA) in differentiating between in-situ and minimally-invasive from invasive adenocarcinomas in subsolid lung nodules (SSLNs).

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Two radiologists retrospectively reviewed 49 SSLNs in 44 patients. There were 27 men and 17 women with a mean age of 63±7 (SD) years (range: 47-78years). For each SSLN, type (pure ground-glass or part-solid) was assessed by consensus and CTTA was conducted independently by each observer using a filtration-histogram technique. Different filters were used before histogram quantification: no filtration, fine, medium and coarse, followed by histogram quantification using mean intensity, standard deviation (SD), entropy, mean positive pixels (MPP), skewness and kurtosis.

RESULTS

We analyzed 13 pure ground-glass and 36 part-solid nodules corresponding to 16 adenocarcinomas in-situ (AIS), 5 minimally invasive adenocarcinomas (MIA) and 28 invasive adenocarcinomas (IVA). At uni- and multivariate analysis CTTA allowed discriminating between IVAs and AIS/MIA (P<0.05 and P=0.025, respectively) with the following histogram parameters: skewness using fine textures and kurtosis using coarse filtration for pure ground-glass nodules, and SD without filtration for part-solid nodules.

CONCLUSION

CTTA has the potential to differentiate AIS and MIA from IVA among SSLNs. However, our results require further validation on a larger cohort.