Magnetic resonance imaging semantic and quantitative features analyses: an additional diagnostic tool for breast phyllodes tumors

Am J Transl Res. 2020 May 15;12(5):2083-2092. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to differentiate benign and non-benign (borderline/malignant) phyllodes tumors of the breast by the semantic and quantitative features in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Methods: The female patients, diagnosed with phyllodes tumors by MRI and pathological test, were retrospectively selected from December, 2006 to April, 2019. The MRI of benign, borderline and malignant phyllodes tumors was analyzed using 8 semantic features and 20 computed quantitative features from diffuse contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). The semantic features were analyzed by univariate analysis. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) method was used to identify the optimal subset of MRI quantitative features. According to the results from multivariate logistic regression for the semantic and quantitative features, the model was constructed to differentiate benign and non-benign (borderline/malignant) phyllodes tumors.

Results: Thirty-two benign (58.18%), 13 borderline (23.64%) and 10 malignant (18.18%) phyllodes tumors were identified in 54 patients. Five semantic features were proved to be significantly correlated with pathologic grade, including size, the T1 weighted image signal intensity, fat-saturated T2-weighted image signal intensity, enhanced signal intensity, and kinetic curve pattern. With the analysis of LASSO method, three quantitative texture features with significant predictive ability were selected. The model combining both the semantic and quantitative features was proved to have good performance in differentiation on phyllodes tumors, yielding an area under receiver operating characteristic curve, accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 0.893, 0.933, 1.000, and 0.818, respectively.

Conclusion: The constructed model based on the semantic and quantitative features of DCE-MRI can significantly improve the differential diagnosis of phyllodes tumors in breast.

Keywords: MRI; Phyllodes tumor; breast; quantitative; semantic.