CT-derived radiomic features to discriminate histologic characteristics of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors

La radiologia medica (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

To assess the ability of radiomic features (RF) extracted from contrast-enhanced CT images (ceCT) and non-contrast-enhanced (non-ceCT) in discriminating histopathologic characteristics of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (panNET).

Methods

panNET contours were delineated on pre-surgical ceCT and non-ceCT. First- second- and higher-order RF (adjusted to eliminate redundancy) were extracted and correlated with histological panNET grade (G1 vs G2/G3), metastasis, lymph node invasion, microscopic vascular infiltration. Mann–Whitney with Bonferroni corrected p values assessed differences. Discriminative power of significant RF was calculated for each of the end-points. The performance of conventional-imaged-based-parameters was also compared to RF.

Results

Thirty-nine patients were included (mean age 55-years-old; 24 male). Mean diameters of the lesions were 24 × 27 mm. Sixty-nine RF were considered. Sphericity could discriminate high grade tumors (AUC = 0.79, p = 0.002). Tumor volume (AUC = 0.79, p = 0.003) and several non-ceCT and ceCT RF were able to identify microscopic vascular infiltration: voxel-alignment, neighborhood intensity-difference and intensity-size-zone families (AUC ≥ 0.75, p < 0.001); voxel-alignment, intensity-size-zone and co-occurrence families (AUC ≥ 0.78, p ≤ 0.002), respectively). Non-ceCT neighborhood-intensity-difference (AUC = 0.75, p = 0.009) and ceCT intensity-size-zone (AUC = 0.73, p = 0.014) identified lymph nodal invasion; several non-ceCT and ceCT voxel-alignment family features were discriminative for metastasis (p < 0.01, AUC = 0.80–0.85). Conventional CT ‘necrosis’ could discriminate for microscopic vascular invasion (AUC = 0.76, p = 0.004) and ‘arterial vascular invasion’ for microscopic metastasis (AUC = 0.86, p = 0.001). No conventional-imaged-based-parameter was significantly associated with grade and lymph node invasion.

Conclusions

Radiomic features can discriminate histopathology of panNET, suggesting a role of radiomics as a non-invasive tool for tumor characterization.

Trial registration number: NCT03967951, 30/05/2019

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Data availability

Prior study cited at relevant place in the text as Ref [17].

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Funding

The study was supported by an AIRC grant (IG18965); the PI is professor Massimo Falconi. PhD Scholarship of Dr Valentina Andreasi and Research Fellowship of Dr. Francesca Muffatti were supported by Gioja Bianca Costanza Fund.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Via Olgettina 60, 20132, Milan, Italy

    Giulia Benedetti, Marta Maria Panzeri, Maurizio Barbera, Diego Palumbo, Stephanie Steidler & Francesco De Cobelli

  2. Radiology, Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

    Giulia Benedetti

  3. Medical Physics, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy

    Martina Mori, Carla Sini & Claudio Fiorino

  4. Pancreatic Surgery Unit, Pancreas Translational & Clinical Research Center, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy

    Francesca Muffatti, Valentina Andreasi, Stefano Partelli & Massimo Falconi

  5. Department of Pathology, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy

    Claudio Doglioni

  6. Endocrinology Unit, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy

    Marco Manzoni

  7. Vita-Salute University, Milan, Italy

    Claudio Doglioni, Stefano Partelli, Massimo Falconi, Claudio Fiorino & Francesco De Cobelli

  8. Experimental Imaging Center, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Via Olgettina 60, 20132, Milan, Italy

    Francesco De Cobelli

Authors
  1. Giulia Benedetti
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  2. Martina Mori
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  3. Marta Maria Panzeri
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  4. Maurizio Barbera
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  5. Diego Palumbo
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  6. Carla Sini
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  7. Francesca Muffatti
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  8. Valentina Andreasi
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  9. Stephanie Steidler
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  10. Claudio Doglioni
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  11. Stefano Partelli
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  12. Marco Manzoni
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  13. Massimo Falconi
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  14. Claudio Fiorino
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  15. Francesco De Cobelli
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Giulia Benedetti, Martina Mori, Marta Maria Panzeri, Maurizio Barbera and Francesca Muffatti. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Giulia Benedetti and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesco De Cobelli.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval research involves human participants

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele (19/INT/ 2019). The study is registered at ClinicalTrial.gov (registration number NCT03967951, 31/05/2019).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Patients signed informed consent regarding publishing their data and photographs.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Cite this article

Benedetti, G., Mori, M., Panzeri, M.M. et al. CT-derived radiomic features to discriminate histologic characteristics of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. Radiol med (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11547-021-01333-z

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Keywords

  • Pancreatic neoplasms
  • Neuroendocrine tumors
  • Radiomic features
  • Area under the curve (AUC)
  • Computed tomography