Usefulness of the Texture Signatures Based on Multiparametric MRI in Predicting Growth Hormone Pituitary Adenoma Subtypes

Chen-Xi Liu; Li-Jun Heng; Yu Han; Sheng-Zhong Wang; Lin-Feng Yan; Ying Yu; Jia-Liang Ren; Wen Wang; Yu-Chuan Hu; Guang-Bin Cui

doi:10.3389/fonc.2021.640375

Usefulness of the Texture Signatures Based on Multiparametric MRI in Predicting Growth Hormone Pituitary Adenoma Subtypes

Front Oncol. 2021 Jul 7:11:640375. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2021.640375. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Chen-Xi Liu^{1

2}, Li-Jun Heng³, Yu Han¹, Sheng-Zhong Wang⁴, Lin-Feng Yan^{1

2}, Ying Yu^{1

2}, Jia-Liang Ren⁵, Wen Wang^{1

2}, Yu-Chuan Hu^{1

2}, Guang-Bin Cui^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiology, Tangdu Hospital, Air Force Medical University (Fourth Military Medical University), Xi'an, China.
² Functional and Molecular Imaging Key Lab of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, China.
³ Department of Neurosurgery, Tangdu Hospital, Air Force Medical University (Fourth Military Medical University), Xi'an, China.
⁴ Faculty of Medical Technology, Shaanxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Xianyang, China.
⁵ GE Healthcare China, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Objective: To explore the usefulness of texture signatures based on multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in predicting the subtypes of growth hormone (GH) pituitary adenoma (PA).

Methods: Forty-nine patients with GH-secreting PA confirmed by the pathological analysis were included in this retrospective study. Texture parameters based on T1-, T2-, and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted images (T1C) were extracted and compared for differences between densely granulated (DG) and sparsely granulated (SG) somatotroph adenoma by using two segmentation methods [region of interest 1 (ROI₁), excluding the cystic/necrotic portion, and ROI₂, containing the whole tumor]. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to determine the differentiating efficacy.

Results: Among 49 included patients, 24 were DG and 25 were SG adenomas. Nine optimal texture features with significant differences between two groups were obtained from ROI₁. Based on the ROC analyses, T1WI signatures from ROI₁ achieved the highest diagnostic efficacy with an AUC of 0.918, the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were 85.7, 72.0, 100.0, 100.0, and 77.4%, respectively, for differentiating DG from SG. Comparing with the T1WI signature, the T1C signature obtained relatively high efficacy with an AUC of 0.893. When combining the texture features of T1WI and T1C, the radiomics signature also had a good performance in differentiating the two groups with an AUC of 0.908. In addition, the performance got in all the signatures from ROI₂ was lower than those in the corresponding signature from ROI_1.

Conclusion: Texture signatures based on MR images may be useful biomarkers to differentiate subtypes of GH-secreting PA patients.

Keywords: densely granulated somatotroph adenoma; growth hormone pituitary adenoma; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); pathological subtype; sparsely granulated somatotroph adenoma; texture analysis.