Multiphase MRI-Based Radiomics for Predicting Histological Grade of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly heterogeneous cancer. Accurate preoperative prediction of histological grade holds potential for improving clinical management and disease prognostication.

To evaluate the performance of a radiomics signature based on multiphase MRI in assessing histological grade in solitary HCC.

Retrospective.

A total of 405 patients with histopathologically confirmed solitary HCC and with liver gadolinium ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA)-enhanced MRI within 1 month of surgery.

Contrast-enhanced T1-weighted spoiled gradient echo sequence (LAVA) at 1.5 or 3.0 T.

Tumors were graded (low/high) according to results of histopathology. Basic clinical characteristics (including age, gender, serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) level, history of hepatitis B, and cirrhosis) were collected and tumor size measured. Radiomics features were extracted from Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI data. Three feature selection strategies were employed sequentially to identify the optimal features: SelectFromModel (SFM), SelectPercentile (SP), and recursive feature elimination with cross-validation (RFECV). Probabilities of five single-phase radiomics-based models were averaged to generate a radiomics signature. A combined model was built by combining the radiomics signature and clinical predictors.

Pearson χ² test/Fisher exact test, Wilcoxon rank sum test, interclass correlation coefficient (ICC), univariable/multivariable logistic regression analysis, area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), DeLong test, calibration curve, Brier score, decision curve, Kaplan-Meier curve, and log-rank test. A P-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

High-grade HCCs were present in 33.8% of cases. AFP levels (odds ratio [OR] 1.89) and tumor size (>5 cm; OR 2.33) were significantly associated with HCC grade. The combined model had excellent performance in assessing HCC grade in the test dataset (AUC: 0.801), and demonstrated satisfactory calibration and clinical utility.

A model that combined a radiomics signature derived from preoperative multiphase Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI and clinical predictors showed good performance in assessing HCC grade.

3 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 5.