Radiomics in Oncological PET/CT: a Methodological Overview

• Published in: Nuclear medicine and molecular imaging Vol. 53; no. 1; pp. 14 - 29
• Main Authors: Ha, Seunggyun, Choi, Hongyoon, Paeng, Jin Chul, Cheon, Gi Jeong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.02.2019; Springer Nature B.V; 대한핵의학회
• Subjects: Cardiology; Dependence; Feature extraction; Image acquisition; Image quality; Image reconstruction; Image segmentation; Imaging; Machine learning; Medical imaging; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Metabolism; Methodology; Nuclear Medicine; Oncology; Orthopedics; Positron emission; Radiology; Radiomics; Review; Spatial distribution; Standardization; Texture; Tomography; Workflow; 방사선과학; Oncology; Texture analysis; FDG PET/CT; Intratumoral heterogeneity; Radiomics
• ISSN: 1869-3474; 1869-3482
• DOI: 10.1007/s13139-019-00571-4

Radiomics is a medical imaging analysis approach based on computer-vision. Metabolic radiomics in particular analyses the spatial distribution patterns of molecular metabolism on PET images. Measuring intratumoral heterogeneity via image is one of the main targets of radiomics research, and it aims to build a image-based model for better patient management. The workflow of radiomics using texture analysis follows these steps: 1) imaging (image acquisition and reconstruction); 2) preprocessing (segmentation & quantization); 3) quantification (texture matrix design & texture feature extraction); and 4) analysis (statistics and/or machine learning). The parameters or conditions at each of these steps are effect on the results. In statistical testing or modeling, problems such as multiple comparisons, dependence on other variables, and high dimensionality of small sample size data should be considered. Standardization of methodology and harmonization of image quality are one of the most important challenges with radiomics methodology. Even though there are current issues in radiomics methodology, it is expected that radiomics will be clinically useful in personalized medicine for oncology.