Objective: This study aimed at evaluating linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers for estimating final Gleason score preoperatively using multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mp-MRI) and clinical parameters.
Materials and methods: Thirty-three patients who underwent mp-MRI on a 3T clinical MR scanner and radical prostatectomy were enrolled in this study. The input features for classifiers were age, the presence of a palpable prostate abnormality, prostate specific antigen (PSA) level, index lesion size, and Likert scales of T2 weighted MRI (T2w-MRI), diffusion weighted MRI (DW-MRI), and dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) estimated by an experienced radiologist. SVM based recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) was used for eliminating features. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied for data uncorrelation.
Results: Using a standard PCA before final Gleason score classification resulted in mean sensitivities of 51.19% and 64.37% and mean specificities of 72.71% and 39.90% for LDA and SVM, respectively. Using a Gaussian kernel PCA resulted in mean sensitivities of 86.51% and 87.88% and mean specificities of 63.99% and 56.83% for LDA and SVM, respectively.
Conclusion: SVM classifier resulted in a slightly higher sensitivity but a lower specificity than LDA method for final Gleason score prediction for prostate cancer for this limited patient population.