Reliability of PET/CT shape and heterogeneity features in functional and morphological components of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer tumors: a repeatability analysis in a prospective multi-center cohort

Marie-Charlotte Desseroit (1) , Florent Tixier (1) , Wolfgang Weber (2) , Barry A Siegel (3) , Catherine Cheze Le Rest (1) , Dimitris Visvikis (4) , Mathieu Hatt (4)

1 CHU Poitiers - Département de médecine nucléaire - CHU Poitiers - Département de médecine nucléaire
2 Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center [New York]
3 Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
4 LaTIM - Laboratoire de Traitement de l'Information Medicale

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to assess the reliability of shape and heterogeneity features in both Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and low-dose Computed Tomography (CT) components of PET/CT. A secondary objective was to investigate the impact of image quantization. Material and methods: A Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act -compliant secondary analysis of deidentified prospectively acquired PET/CT test-retest datasets of 74 patients from multi-center Merck and ACRIN trials was performed. Metabolically active volumes were automatically delineated on PET with Fuzzy Locally Adaptive Bayesian algorithm. 3DSlicerTM was used to semi-automatically delineate the anatomical volumes on low-dose CT components. Two quantization methods were considered: a quantization into a set number of bins (quantizationB) and an alternative quantization with bins of fixed width (quantizationW). Four shape descriptors, ten first-order metrics and 26 textural features were computed. Bland-Altman analysis was used to quantify repeatability. Features were subsequently categorized as very reliable, reliable, moderately reliable and poorly reliable with respect to the corresponding volume variability. Results: Repeatability was highly variable amongst features. Numerous metrics were identified as poorly or moderately reliable. Others were (very) reliable in both modalities, and in all categories (shape, 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-order metrics). Image quantization played a major role in the features repeatability. Features were more reliable in PET with quantizationB, whereas quantizationW showed better results in CT. Conclusion: The test-retest repeatability of shape and heterogeneity features in PET and low-dose CT varied greatly amongst metrics. The level of repeatability also depended strongly on the quantization step, with different optimal choices for each modality. The repeatability of PET and low-dose CT features should be carefully taken into account when selecting metrics to build multiparametric models.

Mots clés: PET/CT; texture analysis; radiomics; repeatability

Domaines: Médecine nucléaire; Cancer; Vision par ordinateur et reconnaissance de formes [cs.CV]; Imagerie médicale; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Marie-Charlotte Desseroit, Florent Tixier, Wolfgang Weber, Barry A Siegel, Catherine Cheze Le Rest, et al.. Reliability of PET/CT shape and heterogeneity features in functional and morphological components of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer tumors: a repeatability analysis in a prospective multi-center cohort. Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 2016. ⟨hal-01376668⟩