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Distribution of SUVpeak, Entropy, HGZE, and SRE in healthy tissues and in tumors as a function of the voxel size: in blue for 4x4x4 mm3, in green for 2x2x2 mm3 and in pink for 1x1x1 mm3.

Textural and shape analysis is gaining considerable interest in medical imaging, particularly to identify parameters characterizing tumor heterogeneity and to feed radiomic models. Here, we present a free, multiplatform, and easy-to-use freeware called LIFEx, which enables the calculation of conventional, histogram-based, textural, and shape features from PET, SPECT, MR, CT, and US images, or from any combination of imaging modalities. The application does not require any programming skills and was developed for medical imaging professionals. The goal is that independent and multicenter evidence of the usefulness and limitations of radiomic features for characterization of tumor heterogeneity and subsequent patient management can be gathered. Many options are offered for interactive textural index calculation and for increasing the reproducibility among centers. The software already benefits from a large user community (more than 800 registered users), and interactions within that community are part of the development strategy.Significance: This study presents a user-friendly, multi-platform freeware to extract radiomic features from PET, SPECT, MR, CT, and US images, or any combination of imaging modalities. Cancer Res; 78(16); 4786–9. ©2018 AACR.

A real-time complete example of radiomic feature calculation from a PET/MR scan, where the same volumes of interest are used to extract PET and MR radiomic features.

Well-known software programs that enable the calculation of radiomic features and associated characteristics.

Objective: To compare the performance of conventional and machinelearning approaches for the diagnosis of tumor recurrence after radiation therapy of brain metastases. Methods: 184 symptomatic patients with solitary metastatic brain lesions treated with radiation therapy were enrolled in a monocentric retrospective study from June 2013 to May 2018. The diagnosis was tumor recurrence (n=71) and radiation necrosis (n=113) using as reference standard expert-consensus derived from pathology and long-term follow-up. 37 potential predictors were recorded at the time of radiological progression (7-15 months after therapy): 6 clinical features and 31 imaging features including 20 radiomics features derived from standard of care 3D T1-gadolinium sequences. We compared four approaches (A, B, C, D): expert report using MRI sequences without (A) and with delayedcontrast MRI (TRAM) sequences (B), 11 non-Radiomics imaging features alone (C) and a signature combining variables selected using unsupervised machinelearning algorithms (D), training:validation sets: n=144:40 pts). Results: Overall (n=184), approaches B and C (using TRAM sequence alone) reached comparable performances with respective AUCs [95% CI] of 78.7% [72.3%-85.1%] and 76.8% [70.3%-83.3%]. Both significantly outperformed approach A with AUC [95% CI] of 57.4% [50.7%-64.1%] (DeLong’s test, p-value=10-7). In the validation set (n=40), the signature reached an AUC [95% CI] of 92% [87%-97%]. Conclusion: A quantitative analysis of TRAM sequence seems the best approach for the diagnosis of recurrent tumor after radiation therapy. It is parsimonious, objective and less time-consuming than interpreting all sequences. A signature derived from the analysis of standard of care 3D T1- gadolinium sequence showed promising results that warrant prospective validation.

Radiomics extracts high-throughput quantitative data from medical images to contribute to precision medicine. Radiomic shape features have been shown to correlate with patient outcomes. However, how radiomic shape features vary in function of tumor complexity and tumor volume, as well as with method used for meshing and voxel resampling, remains unknown. The aims of this study are to create tumor models with varying degrees of complexity, or spiculatedness, and evaluate their relationship with quantitatively extracted shape features. Twenty-eight tumor models were mathematically created using spherical harmonics with the spiculatedness degree d being increased by increments of 3 (d = 11 to d = 92). Models were 3D printed with identical bases of 5 cm, imaged with a CT scanner with two different slice thicknesses, and semi-automatically delineated. Resampling of the resulting masks on a 1 × 1 × 1 mm3 grid was performed, and the voxel size of each model was then calculated to eliminate volume differences. Four MATLAB-based algorithms (isosurface (M1), isosurface filter (M2), isosurface remeshing (M3), and boundary (M4)) were used to extract nine 3D features (Volume, Surface area, Surface-to-volume, Compactness1, Compactness2, Compactness3, Spherical Disproportion, Sphericity and Fractional Concavity). To quantify the impact of 3D printing, acquisition, segmentation and meshing, features were computed directly from the stereolithography (STL) file format that was used for 3D printing, and compared to those computed. Changes in feature values between 0.6 and 2 mm slice acquisitions were also compared. Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficients were computed to determine the relationship of each shape feature with spiculatedness for each of the four meshing algorithms. Percent changes were calculated between shape features extracted from the original and resampled contoured images to evaluate the influence of spatial resampling. Finally, the percent change in shape features when the volume was changed from 25% to 150% of their original volume was quantified for three distinct tumor models and compared to the percent change observed when modifying the spiculatedness of the model from d = 11 to d = 92. Values extracted using isosurface remeshing method are the closest to the STL reference ones, with mean differences less than 10.8% (Compactness2) for all features. Seven of the eight features had strong significant correlations with tumor model complexity irrespective of the meshing algorithm (r > 0.98, p < 10-4), with fractional concavity having the lowest correlation coefficient (r = 0.83, p < 10-4, M2). Comparisons of features extracted from the 0.6 and 2 mm slice thicknesses showed that mean differences were from 2.1% (Compactness3) to 12.7% (Compactness2) for the isosurface remeshing method. Resampling on a 1 × 1 × 1 mm3 grid resulted in between 1.3% (Compactness3) to 9.5% (Fractional Concavity) mean changes in feature values. Compactness2, Compactness3, Spherical Disproportion, Sphericity and Fractional Concavity were the features least affected by volume changes. Compactness1 had a 90.4% change with volume, which was greater than the change between the least and most spiculated models. This is the first methodological study that directly demonstrates the relationship of tumor spiculatedness with radiomic shape features, that also produced 3D tumor models, which may serve as reference phantoms for future radiomic studies. Surface Area, Surface-to-volume, and Spherical Disproportion had direct relationships with spiculatedness while the three formulas for Compactness, Sphericity and Fractional Concavity had inverse relationships. The features Compactness2, Compactness3, Spherical Disproportion, and Sphericity should be prioritized as these have minimal variations with volume changes, slice thickness and resampling.

The arrival of immunotherapy has profoundly changed the management of multiple cancers, obtaining unexpected tumour responses. However, until now, the majority of patients do not respond to these new treatments. The identification of biomarkers to determine precociously responding patients is a major challenge. Computational medical imaging (also known as radiomics) is a promising and rapidly growing discipline. This new approach consists in the analysis of high-dimensional data extracted from medical imaging, to further describe tumour phenotypes. This approach has the advantages of being non-invasive, capable of evaluating the tumour and its microenvironment in their entirety, thus characterising spatial heterogeneity, and being easily repeatable over time. The end goal of radiomics is to determine imaging biomarkers as decision support tools for clinical practice and to facilitate better understanding of cancer biology, allowing the assessment of the changes throughout the evolution of the disease and the therapeutic sequence. This review will develop the process of computational imaging analysis and present its potential in immuno-oncology.

We investigated whether a score combining baseline neutrophilia and a PET biomarker could predict outcome in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC). Patients homogeneously treated with definitive chemoradiation plus image-guided adaptive brachytherapy (IGABT) between 2006 and 2013 were analyzed retrospectively. We divided patients into two groups depending on the PET device used: a training set (TS) and a validation set (VS). Primary tumors were semi-automatically delineated on PET images, and 11 radiomics features were calculated (LIFEx software). A PET radiomic index was selected using the time-dependent area under the curve (td-AUC) for 3-year local control (LC). We defined the neutrophil SUV grade (NSG = 0, 1 or 2) score as the number of risk factors among (i) neutrophilia (neutrophil count >7 G/L) and (ii) high risk defined from the PET radiomic index. The NSG prognostic value was evaluated for LC and overall survival (OS). Data from 108 patients were analyzed. Estimated 3-year LC was 72% in the TS (n = 69) and 65% in the VS (n = 39). In the TS, SUVpeak was selected as the most LC-predictive biomarker (td-AUC = 0.75), and was independent from neutrophilia (p = 0.119). Neutrophilia (HR = 2.6), high-risk SUVpeak (SUVpeak > 10, HR = 4.4) and NSG = 2 (HR = 9.2) were associated with low probability of LC in TS. In multivariate analysis, NSG = 2 was independently associated with low probability of LC (HR = 7.5, p

This study aims to evaluate the impact of key parameters on the pseudo computed tomography (pCT) quality generated from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a 3-dimensional (3D) convolutional neural network.Four hundred two brain tumor cases were retrieved, yielding associations between 182 computed tomography (CT) and T1-weighted MRI (T1) scans, 180 CT and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MRI (T1-Gd) scans, and 40 CT, T1, and T1-Gd scans. A 3D CNN was used to map T1 or T1-Gd onto CT scans and evaluate the importance of different components. First, the training set size's influence on testing set accuracy was assessed. Moreover, we evaluated the MRI sequence impact, using T1-only and T1-Gd-only cohorts. We then investigated 4 MRI standardization approaches (histogram-based, zero-mean/unit-variance, white stripe, and no standardization) based on training, validation, and testing cohorts composed of 242, 81, and 79 patients cases, respectively, as well as a bias field correction influence. Finally, 2 networks, namely HighResNet and 3D UNet, were compared to evaluate the architecture's impact on the pCT quality. The mean absolute error, gamma indices, and dose-volume histograms were used as evaluation metrics.Generating models using all the available cases for training led to higher pCT quality. The T1 and T1-Gd models had a maximum difference in gamma index means of 0.07 percentage point. The mean absolute error obtained with white stripe was 78 ± 22 Hounsfield units, which slightly outperformed histogram-based, zero-mean/unit-variance, and no standardization (P.0001). Regarding the network architectures, 3%/3 mm gamma indices of 99.83% ± 0.19% and 99.74% ± 0.24% were obtained for HighResNet and 3D UNet, respectively.Our best pCTs were generated using more than 200 samples in the training data set. Training with T1 only and T1-Gd only did not significantly affect performance. Regardless of the preprocessing applied, the dosimetry quality remained equivalent and relevant for potential use in clinical practice.

Radiomics is a recent area of research in precision medicine and is based on the extraction of a large variety of features from medical images. In the field of radiation oncology, comprehensive image analysis is crucial to personalization of treatments. A better characterization of local heterogeneity and the shape of the tumor, depicting individual cancer aggressiveness, could guide dose planning and suggest volumes in which a higher dose is needed for better tumor control. In addition, noninvasive imaging features that could predict treatment outcome from baseline scans could help the radiation oncologist to determine the best treatment strategies and to stratify patients as at low risk or high risk of recurrence. Nuclear medicine molecular imaging reflects information regarding biological processes in the tumor thanks to a wide range of radiotracers. Many studies involving 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography suggest an added value of radiomics compared with the use of conventional PET metrics such as standardized uptake value for both tumor diagnosis and prediction of recurrence or treatment outcome. However, these promising results should not hide technical difficulties that still currently prevent the approach from being widely studied or clinically used. These difficulties mostly pertain to the variability of the imaging features as a function of the acquisition device and protocol, the robustness of the models with respect to that variability, and the interpretation of the radiomic models. Addressing the impact of the variability in acquisition and reconstruction protocols is needed, as is harmonizing the radiomic feature calculation methods, to ensure the reproducibility of studies in a multicenter context and their implementation in a clinical workflow. In this review, we explain the potential impact of positron emission tomography radiomics for radiation therapy and underline the various aspects that need to be carefully addressed to make the most of this promising approach.

Textural and shape analysis is gaining considerable interest in medical imaging, particularly to identify parameters characterizing tumor heterogeneity and to feed radiomic models. Here, we present a free, multiplatform, and easy-to-use freeware called LIFEx, which enables the calculation of conventional, histogram-based, textural, and shape features from PET, SPECT, MR, CT, and US images, or from any combination of imaging modalities. The application does not require any programming skills and was developed for medical imaging professionals. The goal is that independent and multicenter evidence of the usefulness and limitations of radiomic features for characterization of tumor heterogeneity and subsequent patient management can be gathered. Many options are offered for interactive textural index calculation and for increasing the reproducibility among centers. The software already benefits from a large user community (more than 800 registered users), and interactions within that community are part of the development strategy. Significance: This study presents a user-friendly, multi-platform freeware to extract radiomic features from PET, SPECT, MR, CT, and US images, or any combination of imaging modalities. Cancer Res; 78(16); 4786–9. ©2018 AACR.

// Sylvain Reuze 1, 2, 3, 4 , Fanny Orlhac 1, 5 , Cyrus Chargari 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 , Christophe Nioche 5 , Elaine Limkin 1 , Francois Riet 3 , Alexandre Escande 3 , Christine Haie-Meder 3 , Laurent Dercle 8, 9 , Sebastien Gouy 10 , Irene Buvat 5 , Eric Deutsch 1, 2, 3 and Charlotte Robert 1, 2, 3, 4 1 INSERM, U1030, F-94805, Villejuif, France 2 Universite Paris-Sud, Universite Paris-Saclay, F-94270, Le Kremlin-Bicetre, France 3 Gustave Roussy, Universite Paris-Saclay, Department of Radiotherapy, F-94805, Villejuif, France 4 Gustave Roussy, Universite Paris-Saclay, Department of Medical Physics, F-94805, Villejuif, France 5 IMIV, CEA, INSERM, CNRS, Universite Paris-Sud, Universite Paris-Saclay, CEA-SHFJ, Orsay, France 6 French Military Health Services Academy, Ecole du Val-de-Grâce, Paris, France 7 Institut de Recherche Biomedicale des Armees, Bretigny-sur-Orge, France 8 INSERM, U1015, F-94805, Villejuif, France 9 Gustave Roussy, Universite Paris-Saclay, Department of Nuclear Medicine and Endocrine Oncology, F-94805, Villejuif, France 10 Gustave Roussy, Universite Paris-Saclay, Department of Gynecologic Surgery, F-94805, Villejuif, France Correspondence to: Charlotte Robert, email: ch.robert@gustaveroussy.fr Keywords: radiomics, cervical cancer, texture, PET imaging Received: February 24, 2017 Accepted: April 11, 2017 Published: May 15, 2017 ABSTRACT Objectives: To identify an imaging signature predicting local recurrence for locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) treated by chemoradiation and brachytherapy from baseline 18 F-FDG PET images, and to evaluate the possibility of gathering images from two different PET scanners in a radiomic study. Methods: 118 patients were included retrospectively. Two groups (G1, G2) were defined according to the PET scanner used for image acquisition. Eleven radiomic features were extracted from delineated cervical tumors to evaluate: (i) the predictive value of features for local recurrence of LACC, (ii) their reproducibility as a function of the scanner within a hepatic reference volume, (iii) the impact of voxel size on feature values. Results: Eight features were statistically significant predictors of local recurrence in G1 (p < 0.05). The multivariate signature trained in G2 was validated in G1 (AUC=0.76, p

The aim of this study was to evaluate if bone marrow (BM) SUVmax measured on pre-treatment 18F-FDG PET/CT predicts the clinical outcome of locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC). We recruited retrospectively patients with LACC who underwent staging 18F-FDG PET/CT and had baseline blood tests, then treated by chemoradiation therapy (CRT), followed by image-guided adaptive brachytherapy (IGABT). BM SUVmax was calculated and correlated to inflammatory blood markers. Tumor size and pelvic lymph node involvement were evaluated on baseline MRI. Prognostic value of SUV uptake and blood markers regarding overall survival (OS), pelvic and extra-pelvic recurrence-free survival (PRFS and EPRFS respectively) was assessed using Cox models with adjusted p-values. 116 patients with FIGO stage Ib-IVa cervical cancer, treated between 2005 and 2014, were analyzed. The median follow-up was 75.5 months. BM SUVmax was significantly correlated to tumor SUVmax. In multivariate analysis, PRFS was significantly poorer in patients with high BM SUVmax (>2.8) and neutrophilia (p 5 vs ≤5 cm) could predict PRFS, EPRFS and OS (p 12 vs ≤12) were not prognostic for OS or pelvic and extra-pelvic relapses. Patients with LACC and high BM SUVmax on 18F-FDG PET have worse PFRS following CRT plus IGABT. These results can be potentially explained by the pro-inflammatory role of the tumor microenvironment and G-CSF expressed by tumor cells. These data support the role of PET as a potential indicator of disease aggressiveness beyond tumor staging.

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e14003Background: The incidence of brain metastases increases with frequent use of stereotactic radiotherapy. The main complication is radionecrosis (RN), which is difficult to diagnose with tumor ...

e14014Background: The incidence of brain metastases (BM) increases with frequent use of stereotactic radiotherapy. The main complication is radionecrosis (RN), without any validated treatment. Retr...

Background: The discovery of biomarkers identifying responders to immunotherapy is a major challenge. Tumor and peritumoral immune infiltration has been shown to be associated with response to anti-PD-1/PD-L1. The aim of this study was to develop a radiomics-based imaging tool of tumor immune infiltrate and to assess whether such a tool could predict clinical outcomes of patients treated with anti-PD1/PDL1. Methods: A predictive radiomics-based model of tumor-infiltrating CD8+ T cells was trained using data from the head and neck cohort of The Cancer Imaging Archive (HNSC-TCIA). Two cohorts from our institute were used for validation. Contrast-enhanced CTs of 57 patients from the HNSC-TCIA were manually segmented (tumor and surrounding tissue) and 76 radiomics features extracted. A radiomics-based score was build using radiomics features to predict tumor-infiltrating CD8+ T-cells' abundance, which was estimated using RNA-sequencing data from The Cancer Genome Atlas, and the Microenvironment Cell Populations-counter signature. As a first validation, this signature was applied to an independent cohort of 100 patients for whom the pathologic tumor immune infiltrate was postulated as either favorable (lymphoma, melanoma, lung, bladder, renal, MSI+ cancers, and adenopathy; 70 patients) or unfavorable (adenoid cystic carcinoma, low-grade neuroendocrine tumors, uterine leiomyoma; 30 patients). The signature was then applied on baseline-CTs of a second external cohort of 139 patients prospectively enrolled in anti PD-1/PD-L1 phase 1 trials. The median of the radiomics-based CD8+ score was used to separate patients into two groups (high and low score). Survival was estimated using Cox-proportional hazards model. Results: We developed a radiomics-based CD8+ signature using the six radiomics features that had highest performance on random forest. In the first external cohort, the radiomics-based CD8 T-cells score was associated with the postulated tumor immune infiltrate (Wilcoxon test, P < 0.001). In the second external cohort of patients treated with anti-PD-1/anti-PD-L1, median (±SD) radiomics score was 109.6±61.3. Patients with high-predicted score had significantly better OS (HR= 0.55, 95%CI=0.36-0.86, P= 0.009). The radiomics-based CD8+ predicted score remained significant in a multivariate Cox regression analysis including RMH score (HR= 0.50, 95%CI=0.32-0.78, P= 0.003). Conclusions: The radiomics-based signature of CD8+ T cells appears as a promising tool to estimate tumor immune infiltrate and to infer the outcome of patients treated with anti-PD-1/PD-L1. Citation Format: Roger Sun, Elaine Johanna Limkin, Laurent Dercle, Sylvain Reuzé, Stéphane Champiat, David Brandao, Loic Verlingue, Samy Ammari, Sandrine Aspeslagh, Antoine Hollebecque, Christophe Massard, Aurélien Marabelle, Jean-Yves Scoazec, Charlotte Robert, Jean-Charles Soria, Eric Deutsch, Charles Ferté. Prediction of clinical outcomes of cancer patients treated with anti-PD-1/PD-L1 using a radiomics-based imaging score of immune infiltrate [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2017 Oct 26-30; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2018;17(1 Suppl):Abstract nr A051.

Introduction Radiomics is a promising method which has undergone rapid development over the last few years. However, it has been shown that different acquisition/reconstruction parameters could introduce biases in PET-based textural feature calculation [1] , [2] . The aim of this study was (i) to evaluate the impact of voxel size, spatial resolution (SR) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on feature values, (ii) to propose a harmonization method of 18F-FDG PET images based on phantom acquisitions to reduce the impact of SR and SNR on radiomic indices. Methods 115 cervical cancer patients were included retrospectively. Two groups were defined according to the PET scanner used for baseline image acquisition (G1: Siemens Biograph I; G2: GE Discovery-690). Eleven radiomic features were extracted from a spherical non-pathological hepatic volume of interest (VOI). The impact of voxel size was investigated by resampling all images into three different matrix sizes: 5.3 mm × 5.3 mm × 3.4 mm (G1 grid size), 2.7 mm × 2.7 mm × 3.4 mm (G2 grid size), 2.0 mm × 2.0 mm × 2.0 mm. In addition, two FDG-filled phantoms (homogeneous: HP, triple-line: TLP) were acquired on a GE Discovery-690 PET/CT with seven acquisition and reconstruction protocols, by changing the iteration number and post-filtering FWHM and with or without PSF modeling. SR was evaluated for all sets using TLP and all images were convolved by a 3D-Gaussian function (referred to harmonization filter HF hereafter) with a specific standard deviation so that all filtered images had the same SR as when using the clinical protocol. SNR was evaluated using the homogeneous phantom before and after HF. Radiomic features were also calculated in 22 spherical VOI (19.5 mL) before and after HF on the homogeneous phantom. Bland-Altman plots were used to characterize the dispersion of values between original and HF images. P-values from permutation tests were calculated between the two sets. Results At least 4 features (SUVmax, SUVpeak, Homogeneity, SRE) were highly dependent on the PET scanner in the three sets of patient images (p Original images of the phantoms showed large differences in both SR (3.3–7.9 mm) and SNR (9.2–25.7). A large variability of radiomic feature values was observed between different reconstruction protocols, especially for those with point-spread function correction. After filtering all images to the clinical SR (7.9 mm), feature values were less scattered according to Bland-Altman analysis (Figure 1). The difference in feature values between 2 mm and 6.4 mm FWHM post-filtering was highly significant on original images (permutation test, p 0.05). The whole analysis will be reproduced on a Philips Gemini PET device (work in progress). Conclusions A high variability of feature values was observed on clinical data due to the gap in technology between the two imaging devices. Gaussian filtering showed promising results on phantom data, by reducing the differences in textural feature values between protocols. When applied on highly different PET devices, this method might eliminate some biological signal. A combination of Gaussian filtering and voxel resampling will be investigated on patient data to assess the clinical use of such method on more recent devices.