MRI-based radiomics in distinguishing Kaposiform hemangioendothelioma (KHE) and fibro-adipose vascular anomaly (FAVA) in extremities: A preliminary retrospective study

Objective: To investigate the pretreatment differentiation between Kaposiform hemangioendothelioma (KHE) and fibro-adipose vascular anomaly (FAVA) in extremities of pediatric patients. To build and validate an MRI-based radiomic model. Method: In this retrospective study, we obtained imaging data from 43 patients. We collected and compared clinical information, sketched region of interest (ROI), and extracted radiomic features from fat-suppressed T2-weighted (T2FS) images of the two cohorts of 30 and 13 patients respectively (training versus testing cohort 7:3). To select features, we used two sample t-test and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression. The support vector machine (SVM) classification was constructed and evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Results: Thirty patients with KHE and 13 patients with FAVA in the extremities were included. Most lesions demonstrated low to intermediate signal intensity on Tl-weighted images and hyperintense signals on T2-weighted ones. They also showed similar traits pathologically. Initially, 107 radiomic features were acquired and then three were finally selected. The support vector machine (SVM) model was able to differentiate the two anomalies from each other with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.807 (95%CI 0.602-1.000) and 0.846 (95%CI 0.659-1.000) in training and testing cohort, respectively. Conclusion: The derived radiomic features were helpful in differentiating KHE from FAVA. A model which contained these features might further improve the performance and hopefully could serve as a potential tool for identification. (C) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study aimed to investigate the pretreatment differentiation between KHE and FAVA in pediatric patients' extremities and build and validate an MRI-based radiomic model. The results showed that radiomic features were helpful in differentiating KHE from FAVA. This study is of great importance for the diagnosis and treatment of the diseases.