Role of radiomics in predicting immunotherapy response

Immunotherapies have revolutionised cancer management. Despite their success, durable responses are limited to a subset of patients. Prediction of immunotherapy response in patients has proven to be difficult due to a lack of robust biomarkers. Routinely collected imaging may offer an additional information source to personalise patient treatment, with advantages over tissue-based biomarkers. Quantitative image analysis or radiomics, which involves the high-throughput extraction of imaging features, has the potential to non-invasively predict cancer histology, outcomes and prognosis. This review evaluates the value of radiomics in patients undergoing immunotherapy, with a summary provided of the performance of radiomics models in predicting immunotherapy response and toxicity, as well as immune correlates. Much of the literature focussed on clinical endpoints and correlates to tissue biomarkers, particularly in lung cancer, while few studies investigated association with immune-related adverse events. Strengths of the studies included more frequent use of clinical trial datasets, homogenous patient cohorts and high-quality diagnostic scans. Limitations of the studies include heterogeneity in study methodology, lack of well-defined homogenous imaging datasets, limited open publishing of imaging datasets, coding and parameters used for radiomics signature development and limited use of external validation datasets. Future research should address the above limitations, as well as further explore the relationship between radiomics and immune-related adverse effects and less well-studied biological correlates such tumour mutational burden, and incorporate known clinical prognostic scores into radiomics models.