Department of Radiology, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Viale del Policlinico, 155 00161, Rome, RM, Italy.
Department of Radiology, University of Rome "Campus Bio-Medico", Via Alvaro del Portillo, 21 00128, Rome, Italy.
J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 2021 Jun;147(6):1587-1597. doi: 10.1007/s00432-021-03606-6. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
To create a review of the existing literature on the radiomic approach in predicting the lymph node status of the axilla in breast cancer (BC).
Two reviewers conducted the literature search on MEDLINE databases independently. Ten articles on the prediction of sentinel lymph node metastasis in breast cancer with a radiomic approach were selected. The study characteristics and results were reported. The quality of the methodology was evaluated according to the Radiomics Quality Score (RQS).
All studies were retrospective in design and published between 2017 and 2020. The majority of studies used DCE-MRI sequences and two investigated only pre-contrast images. The sample size was lower than 200 patients for 7 studies. The pre-processing used software, feature extraction and selection methods and classifier development are heterogeneous and a standardization of results is not yet possible. The average RQS score was 11.1 (maximum possible value = 36). The criteria with the lowest scores were the type of study, validation, comparison with a gold standard, potential clinical utility, cost-effective analysis and open science data.
The field of radiomics is a diagnostic approach of relative recent development. The results in predicting axillary lymph node status are encouraging, but there are still weaknesses in the quality of studies that may limit the reproducibility of the results.
对放射组学方法在预测乳腺癌（BC）腋窝淋巴结状态方面的现有文献进行综述。
两名审查员独立在 MEDLINE 数据库中进行文献检索。选择了 10 篇关于放射组学方法预测乳腺癌前哨淋巴结转移的文章。报告了研究特征和结果。根据放射组学质量评分（RQS）评估方法的质量。
所有研究均为回顾性设计，发表于 2017 年至 2020 年之间。大多数研究使用了 DCE-MRI 序列，有两项研究仅研究了对比前图像。7 项研究的样本量小于 200 例。预处理使用的软件、特征提取和选择方法以及分类器的开发方法具有异质性，目前还无法实现结果的标准化。平均 RQS 评分为 11.1（最高可能值为 36）。评分最低的标准是研究类型、验证、与金标准的比较、潜在临床实用性、成本效益分析和开放科学数据。
放射组学领域是一种相对较新的诊断方法。在预测腋窝淋巴结状态方面的结果令人鼓舞，但研究质量仍存在一些弱点，这可能限制了结果的可重复性。
