A Machine-Learning Approach Using PET-Based Radiomics to Predict the Histological Subtypes of Lung Cancer

We sought to distinguish lung adenocarcinoma (ADC) from squamous cell carcinoma using a machine-learning algorithm with PET-based radiomic features.

A total of 396 patients with 210 ADCs and 186 squamous cell carcinomas who underwent FDG PET/CT prior to treatment were retrospectively analyzed. Four clinical features (age, sex, tumor size, and smoking status) and 40 radiomic features were investigated in terms of lung ADC subtype prediction. Radiomic features were extracted from the PET images of segmented tumors using the LIFEx package. The clinical and radiomic features were ranked, and a subset of useful features was selected based on Gini coefficient scores in terms of associations with histological class. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) of classifications afforded by several machine-learning algorithms (random forest, neural network, naive Bayes, logistic regression, and a support vector machine) were compared and validated via random sampling.

We developed and validated a PET-based radiomic model predicting the histological subtypes of lung cancer. Sex, SUVmax, gray-level zone length nonuniformity, gray-level nonuniformity for zone, and total lesion glycolysis were the 5 best predictors of lung ADC. The logistic regression model outperformed all other classifiers (AUC = 0.859, accuracy = 0.769, F1 score = 0.774, precision = 0.804, recall = 0.746) followed by the neural network model (AUC = 0.854, accuracy = 0.772, F1 score = 0.777, precision = 0.807, recall = 0.750).

A machine-learning approach successfully identified the histological subtypes of lung cancer. A PET-based radiomic features may help clinicians improve the histopathologic diagnosis in a noninvasive manner.