Potential Complementary Value of Noncontrast and Contrast Enhanced CT Radiomics in Colorectal Cancers

The aim of our study was to assess the relationships between textural features extracted from contrast enhanced (CE) and noncontrast enhanced (NCE) computed tomography (CT) images of primary colorectal cancer, in order to identify radiomics features more likely to provide potential complementary information regarding outcome.

Sixty-one patients with primary colorectal cancer underwent both CE-CT and NCE-CT scans within the same acquisition. First-order and textural features (with three different methods for grey-level discretization) were extracted from the tumor volume in both modalities and their correlation was assessed with Spearman's rank correlation (rs). Significance was assessed at p < 0.05 with correction for multiple comparisons. Kaplan-Meier estimation and log-rank tests were used to identify features associated with long term patient survival.

Moderate positive correlations were observed between CE-CT and NCE-CT histogram-derived entropy (Entropy_Hist) and area under the curve (CH_AUC) (rs = 0.49, p < 0.001 and rs= 0.45, p < 0.001, respectively). Some second and third order textural features were found highly correlated between CE-CT and NCE-CT, such as small zone-size emphasis SZSE (rs = 0.729, p < 0.001) and zone-size percentage (rs = 0.770, p < 0.001). Grey-levels discretization methods influenced these correlations. A few of the third order NCE-CT and CE-CT features were significantly associated with survival.

Some radiomics features with moderate correlations between nonenhanced and enhanced CT images were found to be associated with survival, thus suggesting that complementary prognostic value may be extracted from both modalities when available.