MRI Radiomics in Prostate Cancer: A Reliability Study.

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Oncology
• Radiology

Background:

• Radiomics offers quantitative imaging features for clinical endpoint correlation.
• Robustness challenges in radiomics are linked to acquisition, reconstruction, and segmentation.
• Prostate cancer (PCa) presents difficulties due to lesion identification discrepancies and protocol heterogeneity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the reliability of radiomics in prostate cancer (PCa) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Main Methods:

• A cohort of patients with PSA rise underwent standardized multiparametric MRI.
• Two experienced radiologists segmented MRI-defined suspicious cancer lesions.
• Texture features were extracted using LIFEx and analyzed for reliability via intraclass coefficient correlation (ICC).

Main Results:

• Of 44 patients, 26 had confirmed prostate cancer.
• Reliability analysis revealed poor consistency across most MRI sequences (T2, DWI50, DWI400, DWI1,500).
• Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) acquisition showed better, though still limited, reliability for texture features.

Conclusions:

• Low reliability in a homogeneous cohort signals challenges for MRI radiomics in prostate cancer.
• Further clinical studies are essential to explore the potential of MRI radiomics for PCa.