Reliability of tumor segmentation in glioblastoma: Impact on the robustness of MRI-radiomic features Journal Article


Authors: Tixier, F.; Um, H.; Young, R. J.; Veeraraghavan, H.
Article Title: Reliability of tumor segmentation in glioblastoma: Impact on the robustness of MRI-radiomic features
Abstract: Purpose: The use of radiomic features as biomarkers of treatment response and outcome or as correlates to genomic variations requires that the computed features are robust and reproducible. Segmentation, a crucial step in radiomic analysis, is a major source of variability in the computed radiomic features. Therefore, we studied the impact of tumor segmentation variability on the robustness of MRI radiomic features. Method: Fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted (T1WICE) MRI of 90 patients diagnosed with glioblastoma were segmented using a semiautomatic algorithm and an interactive segmentation with two different raters. We analyzed the robustness of 108 radiomic features from five categories (intensity histogram, gray-level co-occurrence matrix, gray-level size-zone matrix (GLSZM), edge maps, and shape) using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and Bland and Altman analysis. Results: Our results show that both segmentation methods are reliable with ICC ≥ 0.96 and standard deviation (SD) of mean differences between the two raters (SDdiffs) ≤ 30%. Features computed from the histogram and co-occurrence matrices were found to be the most robust (ICC ≥ 0.8 and SDdiffs ≤ 30% for most features in these groups). Features from GLSZM were shown to have mixed robustness. Edge, shape, and GLSZM features were the most impacted by the choice of segmentation method with the interactive method resulting in more robust features than the semiautomatic method. Finally, features computed from T1WICEand FLAIR images were found to have similar robustness when computed with the interactive segmentation method. Conclusion: Semiautomatic and interactive segmentation methods using two raters are both reliable. The interactive method produced more robust features than the semiautomatic method. We also found that the robustness of radiomic features varied by categories. Therefore, this study could help motivate segmentation methods and feature selection in MRI radiomic studies. © 2019 American Association of Physicists in Medicine
Keywords: glioblastoma; segmentation; mri; robustness; radiomics
Journal Title: Medical Physics
Volume: 46
Issue: 8
ISSN: 0094-2405
Publisher: American Association of Physicists in Medicine  
Date Published: 2019-08-01
Start Page: 3582
End Page: 3591
Language: English
DOI: 10.1002/mp.13624
PUBMED: 31131906
PROVIDER: scopus
PMCID: PMC6692188
DOI/URL:
Notes: Article -- Export Date: 30 August 2019 -- Source: Scopus
Altmetric
Citation Impact
BMJ Impact Analytics
MSK Authors
  1. Robert J Young
    232 Young
  2. Florent Tixier
    11 Tixier
  3. Hyemin Um
    13 Um