Can peritumoral radiomics increase the efficiency of the prediction for lymph node metastasis in clinical stage T1 lung adenocarcinoma on CT?

Objectives To evaluate the efficiency of radiomics model on CT images of intratumoral and peritumoral lung parenchyma for preoperative prediction of lymph node (LN) metastasis in clinical stage T1 peripheral lung adenocarcinoma patients. Methods Three hundred sixty-six peripheral lung adenocarcinoma patients with clinical stage T1 were evaluated using five CT scanners. For each patient, two volumes of interest (VOIs) on CT were defined as the gross tumor volume (GTV) and the peritumoral volume (PTV, 1.5 cm around the tumor). One thousand nine hundred forty-six radiomic features were obtained from each VOI, and then refined for reproducibility and redundancy. The refined features were investigated for usefulness in building radiomic signatures by mRMR feature ranking method and LASSO classifier. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to develop a radiomic nomogram incorporating the radiomic signature and clinical parameters. The prediction performance was evaluated on the validation cohort. Results The radiomic signatures using the features of GTV and PTV showed a good ability in predicting LN metastasis with an AUC of 0.829 (95% CI, 0.745–0.913) and 0.825 (95% CI, 0.733–0.918), respectively. By incorporating the features of GTV and PTV, the AUC of radiomic signature increased to 0.843 (95% CI, 0.770–0.916). The AUC of radiomic nomogram was 0.869 (95% CI, 0.800–0.938). Conclusions Radiomic signatures of GTV and PTV both had a good prediction ability in the prediction of LN metastasis, and there is no significant difference of AUC between the two groups. The proposed nomogram can be conveniently used to facilitate the preoperative prediction of LN metastasis in T1 peripheral lung adenocarcinomas. Key Points • Radiomics from peritumoral lung parenchyma increase the efficiency of the prediction for lymph node metastasis in clinical stage T1 lung adenocarcinoma on CT. • A radiomic nomogram was developed and validated to predict LN metastasis. • Different scan parameters on CT showed that radiomics signature had good predictive performance.