Radiomics
Radiomics
Main page

Radiomics

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Radiomics

In the field of medicine, radiomics is a method that extracts a large number of features from medical images using data-characterisation algorithms. These features, termed radiomic features, have the potential to uncover tumoral patterns and characteristics that fail to be appreciated by the naked eye. The hypothesis of radiomics is that the distinctive imaging features between disease forms may be useful for predicting prognosis and therapeutic response for various cancer types, thus providing valuable information for personalized therapy. Radiomics emerged from the medical fields of radiology and oncology and is the most advanced in applications within these fields. However, the technique can be applied to any medical study where a pathological process can be imaged.

The image data is provided by radiological modalities as CT, MRI, PET/CT or even PET/MR. The produced raw data volumes are used to find different pixel/voxel characteristics through extraction tools.

The extracted features are saved in large databases where clinics have access so as to enable broadly collaborative and cumulative work in which all can benefit from growing amounts of data, ideally enabling a more precise workflow.

After the images have been saved in the database, they have to be reduced to the essential parts, in this case the tumors, which are called "volumes of interest".

Because of the large image data that needs to be processed, it would be too much work to perform the segmentation manually for every single image if a radiomics database with lots of data is created. Instead of manual segmentation, an automated process has to be used. Two possible solutions are automatic and semiautomatic segmentation algorithms. Before it can be applied on a big scale an algorithm must score as high as possible in the following four tasks:

After the segmentation, many features can be extracted and the relative net change from longitudinal images (delta-radiomics) can be computed. Radiomic features can be divided into five groups: size and shape based–features, descriptors of the image intensity histogram, descriptors of the relationships between image voxels (e.g. gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), run length matrix (RLM), size zone matrix (SZM), and neighborhood gray tone difference matrix (NGTDM) derived textures), textures extracted from filtered images, and fractal features. The mathematical definitions of these features are independent of imaging modality and can be found in the literature. A detailed description of texture features for radiomics can be found in Parekh et al. (2016) and Depeursinge et al. (2017).

Due to its massive variety, feature reductions need to be implemented to eliminate redundant information. Hundreds of different features need to be evaluated with a selection algorithms to accelerate this process. Additionally, features that are unstable and non-reproducible should be eliminated since features with low-fidelity will likely lead to spurious findings and unrepeatable models.

After the selection of features that are important for our task it is crucial to analyze the chosen data. Before the actual analysis, the clinical and molecular (sometimes even the genetic) data needs to be integrated because it has a big impact on what can be deducted from the analysis. There are different methods to finally analyze the data. First, the different features are compared to one another to find out whether they have any information in common and to reveal what it means when they all occur at the same time.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.