Spectral Entropic Radiomics Feature Extraction (SERFE): an adaptive approach for glioblastoma disease classification.

INTRODUCTION

Radiomics-based glioblastoma classification demands feature extraction techniques that can effectively capture tumor heterogeneity while maintaining computational efficiency. Conventional tools such as PyRadiomics and CaPTk rely on extensive handcrafted feature sets, which often result in redundancy and necessitate further optimization steps.

METHODS

This study proposes a novel framework, Spectral Entropic Radiomics Feature Extraction (SERFE), which integrates spectral frequency decomposition, entropy-driven feature selection, and graph-based spatial encoding. SERFE decomposes voxel intensity fluctuations into spectral signatures, employs entropy-based weighting to prioritize informative features, and preserves spatial topology through graph-based modeling. The method was evaluated using the public TCIA glioblastoma dataset.

RESULTS

SERFE generated a refined feature set of 350 radiomic features from an initial pool of 2,260, achieving a 92% stability score and 91.7% classification accuracy. This performance surpasses traditional radiomics methods in both predictive accuracy and feature compactness.

DISCUSSION

The results demonstrate SERFE's capacity to enhance tumor characterization and streamline radiomics pipelines without requiring post-extraction feature reduction. Its compatibility with existing clinical workflows makes it a promising tool for future neuro-oncology applications.