Characterization of texture features of bladder carcinoma and the bladder wall on MRI: initial experience

Abstract

Rationale and objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine textural features that show a significant difference between carcinomatous tissue and the bladder wall on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and explore the feasibility of using them to differentiate malignancy from the normal bladder wall as an initial step for establishing MRI as a screening modality for the noninvasive diagnosis of bladder cancer.

Materials and methods: Regions of interest (ROIs) were manually placed on foci of bladder cancer and uninvolved bladder wall in 22 patients and on the normal bladder wall of 23 volunteers to calculate 40 known textural features. Statistical analysis was applied to determine the difference in these features in bladder cancer versus uninvolved bladder wall versus normal bladder wall of volunteers. The significantly different features were then analyzed using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier to determine their accuracy in differentiating malignancy from the bladder wall.

Results: Thirty-three of 40 features show significant differences between bladder cancer and the bladder wall. Nine of 40 features were significantly different in uninvolved bladder wall of patients versus normal bladder wall of volunteers. Further study indicates that seven of these 33 features were significantly different between uninvolved bladder wall of patients with early cancer and that of volunteers, whereas 15 of 33 features were different between that of patients with advanced cancer and normal wall. With the testing dataset consisting of ROIs acquired from patients, the classification accuracy using 33 textural features fed into the SVM classifier was 86.97%.

Conclusion: The initial experience demonstrates that texture features are sensitive to reveal the differences between bladder cancer and the bladder wall on MRI. The different features can be used to develop a computer-aided system for the evaluation of the entire bladder wall.

Keywords: Texture analysis; bladder cancer; computer assisted diagnosis; imaging technology-MR image.