2 research outputs found
Enhancement Pattern Mapping for Early Detection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Patients with Cirrhosis
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Limited methods exist to accurately characterize the risk of malignant progression of liver lesions. Enhancement pattern mapping (EPM) measures voxel-based root mean square deviation (RMSD) of parenchyma and the contrast-to-noise (CNR) ratio enhances in malignant lesions. This study investigates the utilization of EPM to differentiate between HCC versus cirrhotic parenchyma with and without benign lesions.
METHODS: Patients with cirrhosis undergoing MRI surveillance were studied prospectively. Cases (n=48) were defined as patients with LI-RADS 3 and 4 lesions who developed HCC during surveillance. Controls (n=99) were patients with and without LI-RADS 3 and 4 lesions who did not develop HCC. Manual and automated EPM signals of liver parenchyma between cases and controls were quantitatively validated on an independent patient set using cross validation with manual methods avoiding parenchyma with artifacts or blood vessels.
RESULTS: With manual EPM, RMSD of 0.37 was identified as a cutoff for distinguishing lesions that progress to HCC from background parenchyma with and without lesions on pre-diagnostic scans (median time interval 6.8 months) with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.83 (CI: 0.73-0.94) and a sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 0.65, 0.97, and 0.89, respectively. At the time of diagnostic scans, a sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 0.79, 0.93, and 0.88 were achieved with manual EPM with an AUC of 0.89 (CI: 0.82-0.96). EPM RMSD signals of background parenchyma that did not progress to HCC in cases and controls were similar (case EPM: 0.22 ± 0.08, control EPM: 0.22 ± 0.09, p=0.8). Automated EPM produced similar quantitative results and performance.
CONCLUSION: With manual EPM, a cutoff of 0.37 identifies quantifiable differences between HCC cases and controls approximately six months prior to diagnosis of HCC with an accuracy of 89%
Heterogeneous Image-based Classification Using Distributional Data Analysis
Diagnostic imaging has gained prominence as potential biomarkers for early
detection and diagnosis in a diverse array of disorders including cancer.
However, existing methods routinely face challenges arising from various
factors such as image heterogeneity. We develop a novel imaging-based
distributional data analysis (DDA) approach that incorporates the probability
(quantile) distribution of the pixel-level features as covariates. The proposed
approach uses a smoothed quantile distribution (via a suitable basis
representation) as functional predictors in a scalar-on-functional quantile
regression model. Some distinctive features of the proposed approach include
the ability to: (i) account for heterogeneity within the image; (ii)
incorporate granular information spanning the entire distribution; and (iii)
tackle variability in image sizes for unregistered images in cancer
applications. Our primary goal is risk prediction in Hepatocellular carcinoma
that is achieved via predicting the change in tumor grades at post-diagnostic
visits using pre-diagnostic enhancement pattern mapping (EPM) images of the
liver. Along the way, the proposed DDA approach is also used for case versus
control diagnosis and risk stratification objectives. Our analysis reveals that
when coupled with global structural radiomics features derived from the
corresponding T1-MRI scans, the proposed smoothed quantile distributions
derived from EPM images showed considerable improvements in sensitivity and
comparable specificity in contrast to classification based on routinely used
summary measures that do not account for image heterogeneity. Given that there
are limited predictive modeling approaches based on heterogeneous images in
cancer, the proposed method is expected to provide considerable advantages in
image-based early detection and risk prediction.Comment: 16, 2 figures, 3 table