CT textural analysis of gastric cancer: correlations with immunohistochemical biomarkers

To investigate the ability of CT texture analysis to assess and predict the expression statuses of E-cadherin, Ki67, VEGFR2 and EGFR in gastric cancers, the enhanced CT images of 139 patients with gastric cancer were retrospectively reviewed. The region of interest was manually drawn along the margin of the lesion on the largest slice in the arterial and venous phases, which yielded a series of texture parameters. Our results showed that the standard deviation, width, entropy, entropy (H), correlation and contrast from the arterial and venous phases were significantly correlated with the E-cadherin expression level in gastric cancers (all P < 0.05). The skewness from the arterial phase and the mean and autocorrelation from the venous phase were negatively correlated with the Ki67 expression level in gastric cancers (all P < 0.05). The width, entropy and contrast from the venous phase were positively correlated with the VEGFR2 expression level in gastric cancers (all P < 0.05). No significant correlation was found between the texture features and EGFR expression level. CT texture analysis, which had areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) ranging from 0.612 to 0.715, holds promise in predicting E-cadherin, Ki67 and VEGFR2 expression levels in gastric cancers.