Association Analysis Between Intratumoral and Peritumoral MRI Radiomics Features and Overall Survival of Neoadjuvant Therapy in Rectal Cancer

Abstract

Background: The use of peritumoral features to determine the survival time of patients with rectal cancer (RC) is still imprecise.

Purpose: To explore the correlation between intratumoral, peritumoral and combined features, and overall survival (OS).

Study type: Retrospective.

Population: One hundred sixty-six RC patients (53 women, 113 men; average age: 55 ± 12 years) who underwent radical resection after neoadjuvant therapy.

Field strength/sequence: 3 T; T₂WI sagittal, T₁WI axial, T₂WI axial with fat suppression, and high-resolution T₂WI axial sequences, enhanced T₁WI axial and sagittal sequences with fat suppression.

Assessment: Radiologist A segmented 166 patients, and radiologist B randomly segmented 30 patients. Intratumoral and peritumoral features were extracted, and features with good stability (ICC ≥0.75) were retained through intra-observer analysis. Seven classifiers, including Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Random Forest (RF), Extremely randomized trees (ET), eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and LightGBM (LGBM), were applied to select the classifier with the best performance. Next, the Rad-score of best classifier and the clinical features were selected to establish the models, thus, nomogram was built to identify the association with 1-, 3-, and 5-year OS.

Statistical tests: LASSO, regression analysis, ROC, DeLong method, Kaplan-Meier curve. P < 0.05 indicated a significant difference.

Results: Only Node (irregular tumor nodules in the surrounding mesentery) and ExtraMRF (lymph nodes outside the perirectal mesentery) were significantly different in 20 clinical features. Twelve intratumoral, 3 peritumoral, and 14 combined features related to OS were selected. LR, SVM, and RF classier showed the best efficacy in the intratumoral, peritumoral, and combined model, respectively. The combined model (AUC = 0.954 and 0.821) had better survival association than the intratumoral model (AUC = 0.833 and 0.813) and the peritumoral model (AUC = 0.824 and 0.687).

Data conclusion: The proposed peritumoral model with radiomics features may serve as a tool to improve estimated survival time.

Evidence level: 3 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 4.

Keywords: intratumoral feature; overall survival; peritumoral feature; rectal cancer.