Primary Tumor Radiomic Model for Identifying Extrahepatic Metastasis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Based on Contrast Enhanced Computed Tomography

This study aimed to identify radiomic features of primary tumor and develop a model for indicating extrahepatic metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Contrast-enhanced computed tomographic (CT) images of 177 HCC cases, including 26 metastatic (MET) and 151 non-metastatic (non-MET), were retrospectively collected and analyzed. For each case, 851 radiomic features, which quantify shape, intensity, texture, and heterogeneity within the segmented volume of the largest HCC tumor in arterial phase, were extracted using Pyradiomics. The dataset was randomly split into training and test sets. Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) was performed to augment the training set to 145 MET and 145 non-MET cases. The test set consists of six MET and six non-MET cases. The external validation set is comprised of 20 MET and 25 non-MET cases collected from an independent clinical unit. Logistic regression and support vector machine (SVM) models were identified based on the features selected using the stepwise forward method while the deep convolution neural network, visual geometry group 16 (VGG16), was trained using CT images directly. Grey-level size zone matrix (GLSZM) features constitute four of eight selected predictors of metastasis due to their perceptiveness to the tumor heterogeneity. The radiomic logistic regression model yielded an area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.944 on the test set and an AUROC of 0.744 on the external validation set. Logistic regression revealed no significant difference with SVM in the performance and outperformed VGG16 significantly. As extrahepatic metastasis workups, such as chest CT and bone scintigraphy, are standard but exhaustive, radiomic model facilitates a cost-effective method for stratifying HCC patients into eligibility groups of these workups.

Automated summary

This study aimed to identify radiomic features of primary tumor and develop a model for indicating extrahepatic metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Contrast-enhanced CT images of 177 HCC cases were analyzed, and 851 radiomic features were extracted. Logistic regression and SVM models were identified, while VGG16 was trained using CT images directly. The radiomic logistic regression model showed good performance and outperformed VGG16, providing a cost-effective method for stratifying HCC patients.