Simplifying Radiomics Workflow for Predicting Grade of Glioma: An Approach for Rapid and Reproducible Radiomics

Radiomics with single Region of Interest (ROI) and single-sequence Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) may facilitate the segmentation reproducibility and radiomics workflow due to a time-consuming and complicated delineation of that in multi-sequence MRI images. This study aimed to evaluate the performance of the radiomics approach in grading glioma based on a single-ROI delineation as Gross Tumor Volume (GTV) in a single – sequence as contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MRI. This retrospective study was conducted on contrast-enhanced T1 weighted (CE T1W) MRI images of 60 grade II and 60 grade III glioma patients. The GTV regions were manually delineated. Radiomics features were extracted per patient. The segmentation reproducibility of the robust features was evaluated in several repetitions of GTV delineation. Finally, a linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) assessed the classification performance of the robust features. Four significant robust features were selected for training the model (P-value<0.05). The average Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) of the four features was 0.96 in several repetitions of GTV delineation. The linear SVM model differentiated grades II and III of glioma with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.9 in the training group.  High predicting power for glioma grading can be achieved with radiomics analysis by a single-ROI delineated on a single-sequence MRI image (CE T1W). In addition, single-ROI segmentation can increase radiomics reproducibility.