Radiomics analysis on blood-pool phase of bone scintigraphy for the diagnosis of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Diagnosing Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) presents challenges due to symptom variations, clinical-radiologic delays, and the absence of definitive diagnostic tools. This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic capability of radiomic features derived from blood pool phase images obtained through bone scintigraphy in JIA. A cohort of 190 patients was included, utilizing the area between knee growth plates as the region of interest (ROI) for extracting image features. After preprocessing, quantitative features were extracted from original and filtered images. A recursive feature elimination (RFE) algorithm identified significant features, subsequently employed in training a random forest classifier. In the validation phase, our radiomic model, comprising 14 features (4 original and 10 filtered image features), achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.89 (95% CI: 0.88–0.92). This robust performance confirmed the efficacy of radiomics in identifying active knee arthritis using technetium–99m-methyl diphosphonate blood pool images in JIA patients. This study highlights the diagnostic accuracy of radiomics in discerning arthritic joints, suggesting its potential as an alternative to conventional quantification techniques. The robustness of radiomics in diagnosing arthritic joints signifies a promising avenue for future research in JIA diagnosis and treatment.