The Impact of Radiomics Image Analysis on Adult Hip Pathologies: A Scoping Review

Area of Science:

• Radiology and Medical Imaging
• Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
• Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers

Background:

• Radiomics extracts quantitative features from medical images, offering potential biomarkers for hip disorders.
• Current evidence on radiomics for hip pathologies is dispersed across various imaging modalities and computational methods.
• A comprehensive understanding is needed to assess radiomics' clinical utility in hip imaging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a scoping review of radiomics applications in adult hip imaging.
• To synthesize evidence on radiomics' performance in diagnosis, prognosis, and surgical planning for hip conditions.
• To identify gaps and future directions for clinical adoption of hip radiomics.

Main Methods:

• Scoping review adhering to PRISMA-ScR and Population-Concept-Context framework.
• Searched PubMed, Embase, and Scopus (Jan 2021-Aug 2025) plus snowballing.
• Narrative synthesis of findings clustered by hip pathology and imaging modality.

Main Results:

• Radiomics demonstrated high performance (AUCs ~0.90-0.96) for osteoporosis/fragility fractures using CT and radiographs.
• MRI-based radiomics showed promise for early osteonecrosis diagnosis (AUCs >0.94) and collapse prediction (AUCs ~0.85-0.90).
• Radiomics in femoroacetabular impingement and total hip arthroplasty also reported strong predictive values, with some multicenter generalizability.

Conclusions:

• Radiomics for adult hip disorders shows significant translational promise for screening, diagnosis, and surgical support.
• Methodological robustness varies, necessitating standardization (IBSI), transparent reporting, and prospective validation for broader clinical adoption.
• Multicenter datasets and AI-driven approaches are crucial for advancing clinical utility.