Placental MRI texture features in prenatal exposure to opioids and tobacco

Opioid use disorder during pregnancy significantly increases the likelihood of adverse developmental outcomes in the offspring. Texture analysis serves as a quantitative technique that could be vital in identifying microstructural variations in placentas that have been exposed to opioids and other substances. This is a prospective, multisite cross-sectional study that recruited pregnant women that were greater than 16 weeks of gestation. We manually segmented placenta tissue from half-Fourier single-shot turbo spin-echo (HASTE) sequence MR images. We then assessed placental surface area and texture features using a radiomics pipeline. Using linear models, we assessed the association of substance use on placental surface area and texture features, accounting for demographic characteristics. There were 33 pregnant women with opioid use and 29 controls. Based on regression analysis, opioid exposure was associated with alterations in two texture features while tobacco exposure was associated with alterations in five texture features prior to multiple comparison correction. These were no longer significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. Additionally, tobacco exposure was significantly associated with greater placenta surface area.