[A primer on radiomics]

The reproducible and exhaustive extraction of information from radiological images is a central task in the practice of radiology. Dynamic developments in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are introducing new methods for this task. Radiomics is one such method and offers new opportunities and challenges for the future of radiology.

Radiomics describes the quantitative evaluation, interpretation, and clinical assessment of imaging markers in radiological data. Components of a radiomics analysis are data acquisition, data preprocessing, data management, segmentation of regions of interest, computation and selection of imaging markers, as well as the development of a radiomics model used for diagnosis and prognosis. This article explains these components and aims at providing an introduction to the field of radiomics while highlighting existing limitations.

This article is based on a selective literature search with the PubMed search engine.

Even though radiomics applications have yet to arrive in routine clinical practice, the quantification of radiological data in terms of radiomics is underway and will increase in the future. This holds the potential for lasting change in the discipline of radiology. Through the successful extraction and interpretation of all the information encoded in radiological images the next step in the direction of a more personalized, future-oriented form of medicine can be taken.