Radiomics for the prediction of EGFR mutation subtypes in non-small cell lung cancer

This retrospective study was designed to investigate the ability of radiomics to predict the mutation status of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) subtypes (19Del and L858R) in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

In total, 312 patients with NSCLC were included, and 580 radiomic features were extracted from the computed tomography images of each patient. In the training set, univariate analysis was performed on the clinical and radiomic features; logistic regression models were established using a 5-fold cross validation strategy for the prediction of EGFR subtypes 19Del and L858R. Subsequently, the predictive ability of the joint models was evaluated using the test set.

The results revealed that the radiomic features specific for EGFR 19Del and L858R were Gabor's MTRVariance, Gabor's PTREntropy, and sphericity. Additionally, the respective areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves of the EGFR 19Del and L858R joint models were 0.7925 and 0.7750 for the test set.

Our study demonstrated the potential for radiomics to predict EGFR 19Del and L858R. Epidermal growth factor receptor 19Del and L858R exhibited distinct imaging phenotypes, which may help to guide the selection of more accurate and personalized treatment programs for patients with NSCLC.