Value of predictive liver metastasis in pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms based on ultrasonographic radiomics / 中华超声影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the predictive value of ultrasound-based radiomics for liver metastasis in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNEN).Methods:A retrospective analysis was conducted on clinical, pathological, and ultrasound data of 269 pNEN patients confirmed by pathology at Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital from January 2012 to June 2022, including 94 patients with liver metastasis and 175 without liver metastasis. The regions of interest (ROI) were delineated on the maximum diameter section of the tumor using ITKSNAP software, and radiomics features were extracted using Pyradiomics. Radiomics features with an intra-group correlation coefficient greater than 0.90 were retained, and the optimal features were selected using the maximum relevance minimum redundancy (MRMR) algorithm. The dataset was randomly divided into a training set and a validation set in a ratio of 7∶3, and the random forest algorithm (Rfs) was used to predict pNEN liver metastasis. Three models were constructed, including the clinical ultrasound model, the radiomics model, and the comprehensive model that combined clinical ultrasound and radiomics features. The predictive performance of different models for pNEN liver metastasis was analyzed using the ROC curve, and the predictive performance of different models was compared using the Delong test.Results:A total of 874 features were extracted from the ROI, and 12 highly robust radiomics features were retained for model construction based on inter- and intra-observer correlation grading and feature selection. The area under curve(AUC), sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the radiomics model, the clinical ultrasound model, and the comprehensive model for predicting liver metastasis in pNEN patients were 0.800, 0.574, 0.789, 0.714; 0.780, 0.596, 0.874, 0.777; and 0.890, 0.694, 0.874, 0.810, respectively. The Delong test showed that the comprehensive model had the best predictive performance, with an AUC superior to that of radiomics model ( Z=3.845, P=0.000 12) and clinical ultrasound model ( Z=3.506, P=0.000 45). Conclusions:The radiomics model based on ultrasound has good performance in predicting liver metastasis in pNEN, and the comprehensive model that combines clinical ultrasound and radiomics features can further improve the predictive performance of the model.