Abstract
Objective
To investigate the feasibility of a noninvasive detection of lymph node metastasis (LNM) for early-stage cervical cancer (ECC) patients with radiomics methods based on the textural features from ultrasound images.
Methods
One hundred seventy-two ECC patients between January 2014 and September 2018 with pathologically confirmed lymph node status (LNS) and preoperative ultrasound images were retrospectively reviewed. Regions of interest (ROIs) were delineated by a senior radiologist in the ultrasound images. LIFEx was applied to extract textural features for radiomics study. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression was applied for dimension reduction and for selection of key features. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was adopted to build the radiomics signature. The Mann–Whitney U test was applied to investigate the correlation between radiomics and LNS for both training and validation cohorts. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were applied to evaluate the accuracy of the radiomics prediction models.
Results
A total of 152 radiomics features were extracted from ultrasound images, in which 6 features were significantly associated with LNS (p < 0.05). The radiomics signatures demonstrated a good discrimination between patients with LNM and non-LNM groups. The best radiomics performance model achieved an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.79 (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.71–0.88) in the training cohort and 0.77 (95% CI, 0.65–0.88) in the validation cohort.
Conclusions
The feasibility of radiomics features from ultrasound images for the prediction of LNM in ECC was investigated. This noninvasive prediction method may be used to facilitate preoperative identification of LNS in patients with ECC.
Key Points
• Few studied had investigated the feasibility of radiomics based on ultrasound images for cervical cancer, even though it is the most common practice for gynecological cancer diagnosis and treatment.
• The radiomics signatures based on ultrasound images demonstrated a good discrimination between patients with and without lymph node metastasis with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.79 and 0.77 in the training and validation cohorts, respectively.
• The radiomics model based on preoperative ultrasound images has the potential ability to predict lymph node status noninvasively in patients with early-state cervical cancer, so as to reduce the impact of invasive examination and to optimize the treatment choices.
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Abbreviations
- AUC:
-
Area under the curve
- CE:
-
Contrast-enhanced
- CI:
-
Confidence interval
- CT:
-
Computed tomography
- ECC:
-
Early-stage cervical cancer
- ECCR:
-
Ethics Committee in Clinical Research
- FIGO:
-
International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics
- GLCM:
-
Gray-level co-occurrence matrix
- GLRLM:
-
Gray-level run length matrix
- GLZLM:
-
Grey-level zone length matrix
- LASSO:
-
least absolute shrinkage and selection operator
- LNM:
-
Lymph node metastasis
- LNS:
-
Lymph node status
- MRI:
-
Magnetic resonance imaging
- NGLDM:
-
Neighborhood gray-level different matrix
- PACS:
-
Picture archiving and communication system
- PET/CT:
-
Positron emission tomography/computed tomography
- ROC:
-
Receiver operating characteristic
- ROI:
-
Region of interest
- SLN:
-
Sentinel lymph node
- SVM:
-
Support vector machine
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Funding
This work was partially funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (under Grant No. 11675122) and the Wenzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau (Nos. Y20190183 and 2018ZY016).
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The scientific guarantor of this publication is Congying Xie.
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Jin, X., Ai, Y., Zhang, J. et al. Noninvasive prediction of lymph node status for patients with early-stage cervical cancer based on radiomics features from ultrasound images. Eur Radiol 30, 4117–4124 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-020-06692-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-020-06692-1