Impact of segmentation and discretization on radiomic features in 68Ga-DOTA-TOC PET/CT images of neuroendocrine tumor

EJNMMI Physics

Filippo Molinari¹  Bruno De Santi¹  Elena Gallio²  Osvaldo Rampado²  Giulia Polverari³  Beatrice Dionisi³  Désirée Deandreis³  Virginia Liberini³  Francesco Ceci³  Philippe Thuillier⁴ 

[1] Biolab, Department of Electronics and Telecomunications, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy;Medical Physics Unit, AOU Città della Salute e della Scienza, Turin, Italy;Nuclear Medicine Unit, Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Corso Dogliotti 14, 10126, Turin, Italy;Nuclear Medicine Unit, Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Corso Dogliotti 14, 10126, Turin, Italy;Department of Endocrinology, University Hospital of Brest, Politecnico di Torino Brest, Turin, France;

关键词: Texture analysis;    Radiomics;    Neuroendocrine tumor;    Robustness;    Ga-DOTATOC PET/CT;    Semi-automatic segmentation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s40658-021-00367-6

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

ObjectiveTo identify the impact of segmentation methods and intensity discretization on radiomic features (RFs) extraction from 68Ga-DOTA-TOC PET images in patients with neuroendocrine tumors.MethodsForty-nine patients were retrospectively analyzed. Tumor contouring was performed manually by four different operators and with a semi-automatic edge-based segmentation (SAEB) algorithm. Three SUVmax fixed thresholds (20, 30, 40%) were applied. Fifty-one RFs were extracted applying two different intensity rescale factors for gray-level discretization: one absolute (AR60 = SUV from 0 to 60) and one relative (RR = min-max of the VOI SUV). Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) was calculated to quantify segmentation agreement between different segmentation methods. The impact of segmentation and discretization on RFs was assessed by intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) and the coefficient of variance (COVL). The RFs’ correlation with volume and SUVmax was analyzed by calculating Pearson’s correlation coefficients.ResultsDSC mean value was 0.75 ± 0.11 (0.45–0.92) between SAEB and operators and 0.78 ± 0.09 (0.36–0.97), among the four manual segmentations. The study showed high robustness (ICC > 0.9): (a) in 64.7% of RFs for segmentation methods using AR60, improved by applying SUVmax threshold of 40% (86.5%); (b) in 50.9% of RFs for different SUVmax thresholds using AR60; and (c) in 37% of RFs for discretization settings using different segmentation methods. Several RFs were not correlated with volume and SUVmax.ConclusionsRFs robustness to manual segmentation resulted higher in NET 68Ga-DOTA-TOC images compared to 18F-FDG PET/CT images. Forty percent SUVmax thresholds yield superior RFs stability among operators, however leading to a possible loss of biological information. SAEB segmentation appears to be an optimal alternative to manual segmentation, but further validations are needed. Finally, discretization settings highly impacted on RFs robustness and should always be stated.

【 授权许可】

CC BY