Baseline 18F-FDG PET textural features as predictors of response to chemotherapy in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

We sought to investigate the performance of radiomics analysis on baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT for predicting response to first-line chemotherapy in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

Forty-five patients who received first-line rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone (R-CHOP) chemotherapy for DLBCL were included in the study. Radiomics features and standard uptake value (SUV)-based measurements were extracted from baseline PET images for a total of 147 lesions. The selection of the most relevant features was made using the recursive feature elimination algorithm. A machine-learning model was trained using the logistic regression classifier with cross-validation to predict treatment response. The independent predictors of incomplete response were evaluated with multivariable regression analysis.

A total of 14 textural features were selected by the recursive elimination algorithm, achieving a feature-to-lesion ratio of 1:10. The accuracy and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the model for predicting incomplete response were 0.87 and 0.81, respectively. Multivariable analysis revealed that SUVmax and gray level co-occurrence matrix dissimilarity were independent predictors of lesions with incomplete response to first-line R-CHOP chemotherapy.

Increased textural heterogeneity in baseline PET images was found to be associated with incomplete response in DLBCL.