Radiomics - Quantitative Biomarker Analysis for Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Prediction: A Review

Breast cancer has become a global problem. Though concerns regarding early detection and accurate diagnosis have been raised, continued efforts are required for the development of precision medicine. In the past years, the area of medicinal imaging has seen an unprecedented growth that has led to an advancement of radiomics, which provides countless quantitative biomarkers extracted from modern diagnostic images, including a detailed tumor characterization of breast malignancy.

In this review, we have presented the methodology and implementation of radiomics together with its future trends and challenges on the basis of published papers. Radiomics could distinguish malignant from benign tumors, predict prognostic factors, molecular subtypes of breast carcinoma, treatment response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC), and recurrence survival. The incorporation of quantitative knowledge with clinical, histopathological, and genomic information will enable physicians to afford customized care of treatment for patients with breast cancer.

This review was intended to help physicians and radiologists gain fundamental knowledge regarding radiomics, and also to work collaboratively with researchers to explore evidence for its further usage in clinical practice.