Filtration-histogram based magnetic resonance texture analysis (MRTA) for glioma IDH and 1p19q genotyping

To determine if filtration-histogram based texture analysis (MRTA) of clinical MR imaging can non-invasively identify molecular subtypes of untreated gliomas.

Post Gadolinium T1-weighted (T1+Gad) images, T2-weighted (T2) images and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps of 97 gliomas (54 = WHO II, 20 = WHO III, 23 = WHO IV) between 2010 and 2016 were studied. Whole-tumor segmentations were performed on a proprietary texture analysis research platform (TexRAD, Cambridge, UK) using the software's freehand drawing tool. MRTA commences with a filtration step, followed by quantification of texture using histogram texture parameters. Results were correlated using non-parametric statistics with a logistic regression model generated.

T1+Gad performed best for IDH typing of glioblastoma (sensitivity 91.9%, specificity 100%, AUC 0.945) and ADC for non-Gadolinium-enhancing gliomas (sensitivity 85.7%, specificity 78.4%, AUC 0.877). T2 was moderately precise (sensitivity 83.1%, specificity 78.9%, AUC 0.821). Excellent results for IDH typing were achieved from a combination of the three sequences (sensitivity 90.5%, specificity 94.5%, AUC = 0.98). For discriminating 1p19q genotypes, ADC produced the best results using unfiltered textures (sensitivity 80.6%, specificity 89.3%, AUC 0.811).

Preoperative glioma genotyping with MRTA appears valuable with potential for clinical translation. The optimal choice of texture parameters is influenced by sequence choice, tumour morphology and segmentation method.