Division of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, European Institute of Oncology IRCCS, Via Ripamonti 435, 20141, Milan, Italy.
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy.
Radiol Med. 2024 Sep;129(9):1369-1381. doi: 10.1007/s11547-024-01859-y. Epub 2024 Aug 3.
Radiomics is an emerging field that utilizes quantitative features extracted from medical images to predict clinically meaningful outcomes. Validating findings is crucial to assess radiomics applicability. We aimed to validate previously published magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) radiomics models to predict oncological outcomes in oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC).
Retrospective multicentric study on OTSCC surgically treated from 2010 to 2019. All patients performed preoperative MRI, including contrast-enhanced T1-weighted (CE-T1), diffusion-weighted sequences and apparent diffusion coefficient map. We evaluated overall survival (OS), locoregional recurrence-free survival (LRRFS), cause-specific mortality (CSM). We elaborated different models based on clinical and radiomic data. C-indexes assessed the prediction accuracy of the models.
We collected 112 consecutive independent patients from three Italian Institutions to validate the previously published MRI radiomic models based on 79 different patients. The C-indexes for the hybrid clinical-radiomic models in the validation cohort were lower than those in the training cohort but remained > 0.5 in most cases. CE-T1 sequence provided the best fit to the models: the C-indexes obtained were 0.61, 0.59, 0.64 (pretreatment model) and 0.65, 0.69, 0.70 (posttreatment model) for OS, LRRFS and CSM, respectively.
Our clinical-radiomic models retain a potential to predict OS, LRRFS and CSM in heterogeneous cohorts across different centers. These findings encourage further research, aimed at overcoming current limitations, due to the variability of imaging acquisition, processing and tumor volume delineation.
放射组学是一个新兴领域，它利用从医学图像中提取的定量特征来预测具有临床意义的结果。验证研究结果对于评估放射组学的适用性至关重要。我们旨在验证先前发表的磁共振成像（MRI）放射组学模型，以预测口腔舌鳞状细胞癌（OTSCC）的肿瘤学结果。
这是一项回顾性多中心研究，纳入了 2010 年至 2019 年期间接受手术治疗的 OTSCC 患者。所有患者均行术前 MRI 检查，包括对比增强 T1 加权（CE-T1）、弥散加权序列和表观弥散系数图。我们评估了总生存（OS）、局部区域无复发生存（LRRFS）和特定原因死亡率（CSM）。我们根据临床和放射组学数据制定了不同的模型。C 指数评估了模型的预测准确性。
我们从三个意大利机构收集了 112 例连续的独立患者，以验证先前基于 79 例不同患者发表的 MRI 放射组学模型。验证队列中混合临床放射组学模型的 C 指数低于训练队列，但在大多数情况下仍>0.5。CE-T1 序列最适合模型：OS、LRRFS 和 CSM 的 C 指数分别为 0.61、0.59、0.64（预处理模型）和 0.65、0.69、0.70（后处理模型）。
我们的临床放射组学模型在不同中心的异质队列中仍然具有预测 OS、LRRFS 和 CSM 的潜力。这些发现鼓励进一步研究，旨在克服由于成像采集、处理和肿瘤体积勾画的可变性而导致的当前限制。
