Objective: To differentiate brain pilocytic astrocytoma (PA) from glioblastoma (GBM) using contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) quantitative radiomic features by a decision tree model.
Methods: Sixty-six patients from two centres (PA, n = 31; GBM, n = 35) were randomly divided into training and validation data sets (about 2:1). Quantitative radiomic features of the tumours were extracted from contrast-enhanced MR images. A subset of features was selected by feature stability and Boruta algorithm. The selected features were used to build a decision tree model. Predictive accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were used to assess model performance. The classification outcome of the model was combined with tumour location, age and gender features, and multivariable logistic regression analysis and permutation test using the entire data set were performed to further evaluate the decision tree model.
Results: A total of 271 radiomic features were successfully extracted for each tumour. Twelve features were selected as input variables to build the decision tree model. Two features S(1, -1) Entropy and S(2, -2) SumAverg were finally included in the model. The model showed an accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 0.87, 0.90 and 0.83 for the training data set and 0.86, 0.80 and 0.91 for the validation data set. The classification outcome of the model related to the actual tumour types and did not rely on the other three features (p < 0.001).
Conclusions: A decision tree model with two features derived from the contrast-enhanced MR images performed well in differentiating PA from GBM.
Key points: • MRI findings of PA and GBM are sometimes very similar. • Radiomics provides much more quantitative information about tumours. • Radiomic features can help to distinguish PA from GBM.
Keywords: Decision trees; Glioblastoma; Image enhancement; Magnetic resonance imaging; Pilocytic astrocytoma.