Background: This study aimed to explore the predictability of topological signatures linked to the locoregional relapse (LRR) and distant metastasis (DM) on pretreatment planning computed tomography images of stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients before treatment with stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR).
Methods: We divided 125 primary stage I NSCLC patients (LRR: 34, DM: 22) into training (n = 60) and test datasets (n = 65), and the training dataset was augmented to 260 cases using a synthetic minority oversampling technique. The relapse predictabilities of the conventional wavelet-based features (WF), topology-based features [BF, Betti number (BN) map features; iBF, inverted BN map features], and their combined features (BWF, iBWF) were compared. The patients were stratified into high-risk and low-risk groups using the medians of the radiomics scores in the training dataset.
Results: For the LRR in the test, the iBF, iBWF, and WF showed statistically significant differences (p < 0.05), and the highest nLPC was obtained for the iBF. For the DM in the test, the iBWF showed a significant difference and the highest nLPC.
Conclusion: The iBF indicated the potential of improving the LRR and DM prediction of stage I NSCLC patients prior to undergoing SABR.
Keywords: non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); radiotherapy; relapse; topology.
© 2022 The Authors. Thoracic Cancer published by China Lung Oncology Group and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.