Knowledge discovery from database: MRI radiomic features to assess recurrence risk in high-grade meningiomas

Purpose: We used knowledge discovery from radiomics of T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted imaging (T1C) for assessing relapse risk in patients with high-grade meningiomas (HGMs).

Methods: 279 features were extracted from each ROI including 9 histogram features, 220 Gy-level co-occurrence matrix features, 20 Gy-level run-length matrix features, 5 auto-regressive model features, 20 wavelets transform features and 5 absolute gradient statistics features. The datasets were randomly divided into two groups, the training set (~ 70%) and the test set (~ 30%). Combinations of data preprocessing methods, including normalization (Min-Max, Z-score, Mean), dimensionality reduction (Pearson Correlation Coefficients (PCC)), feature selector (max-Number, cluster) and ten-fold cross-validation were analyzed for their prediction performance. Kaplan-Meier curve, Cox proportional hazards regression model were used and concordance index (C-index), integrated Brier score (IBS) were selected. Model performance was assessed using the C-index.

Results: WHO grade, age, gender, histogram (Mean, Perc.90%, Perc.99%), Gray-level co-occurrence matrix (S(3, -3)DifVarnc, S(5, 5)Correlat, S(1, 0)SumEntrp, S(2, -2)InvDfMom), Teta1, WavEnLL_s-2 and GrVariance were identified as the significant recurrence factors. The pipeline using Mean_PCC_Cluster_10 of T1C yielded the highest efficiency with an IBS of 0.170, 0.188, 0.208 and C-index of 0.709, 0.705, 0.602 in the train, test and validation sets, respectively. The pipeline using MinMax_PCC_Cluster_19 of T2WI yielded the highest efficiency with an IBS of 0.189, 0.175, 0.185 and C-index of 0.783, 0.66, 0.649 in the train, test and validation sets. The pipeline using MinMax_PCC_Cluster_13 of T2WI + T1C yielded the highest efficiency with an IBS of 0.152, 0.164, 0.191 and C-index of 0.701, 0.656, 0.593 in the train, test and validation sets, respectively.

Conclusion: Knowledge discovery from MRI radiomic features can slightly help predict recurrence risk in HGMs. T2WI or T1C yielded better efficiency than T2WI + T1C. The parameters with the best power were Mean, Perc.99%, WavEnLL_s-2, Teta1 and GrVariance.