Assessment of Robustness of MRI Radiomic Features in the Abdomen: Impact of Deep Learning Reconstruction and...

The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of deep learning reconstruction and accelerated acquisition on reproducibility and variability of radiomic features in abdominal MRI. Seventeen volunteers were prospectively included to undergo abdominal MRI on a 3-T scanner for axial T2-weighted, axial T2-weighted fat-suppressed, and coronal T2-weighted sequences. Each sequence was scanned for four times using clinical reference acquisition with standard reconstruction, clinical reference acquisition with deep learning reconstruction, accelerated acquisition with standard reconstruction, and accelerated acquisition with deep learning reconstruction, respectively. The regions of interest were drawn for ten anatomical sites with rigid registrations. Ninety-three radiomic features were extracted via PyRadiomics after z-score normalization. The reproducibility was evaluated using clinical reference acquisition with standard reconstruction as reference by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and concordance correlation coefficient (CCC). The variability among four scans was assessed by coefficient of variation (CV) and quartile coefficient of dispersion (QCD). Our study found that the median (first and third quartile) of overall ICC and CCC values were 0.451 (0.305, 0.583) and 0.450 (0.304, 0.582). The overall percentage of radiomic features with ICC > 0.90 and CCC > 0.90 was 8.1% and 8.1%, and was considered acceptable. The median (first and third quartile) of overall CV and QCD values was 9.4% (4.9%, 17.2%) and 4.9% (2.5%, 9.7%). The overall percentage of radiomic features with CV < 10% and QCD < 10% was 51.9% and 75.0%, and was considered acceptable. Without respect to clinical significance, deep learning reconstruction and accelerated acquisition led to a poor reproducibility of radiomic features, but more than a half of the radiomic features varied within an acceptable range.