Integrating CT-based radiomic model with clinical features improves long-term prognostication in high-risk prostate cancer

Multi-task Bayesian model combining FDG-PET/CT imaging and clinical data for interpretable high-grade prostate cancer prognosis

We propose a fully automatic multi-task Bayesian model, named Bayesian Sequential Network (BSN), for predicting high-grade (Gleason  ≥  8) prostate cancer (PCa) prognosis using pre-prostatectomy FDG-PET/CT images and clinical data. BSN performs one classification task and five survival tasks: predicting lymph node invasion (LNI), biochemical recurrence-free survival (BCR-FS), metastasis-free survival, definitive androgen deprivation therapy-free survival, castration-resistant PCa-free survival, and PCa-specific survival (PCSS). Experiments are conducted using a dataset of 295 patients. BSN outperforms widely used nomograms on all tasks except PCSS, leveraging multi-task learning and imaging data. BSN also provides automated prostate segmentation, uncertainty quantification, personalized feature-based explanations, and introduces dynamic predictions, a novel approach that relies on short-term outcomes to refine long-term prognosis. Overall, BSN shows great promise in its ability to exploit imaging and clinicopathological data to predict poor outcome patients that need treatment intensification with loco-regional or systemic adjuvant therapy for high-risk PCa.

Computed Tomography-Based Radiomics for Long-Term Prognostication of High-Risk Localized Prostate Cancer Patients Received Whole Pelvic Radiotherapy

Given the high death rate caused by high-risk prostate cancer (PCa) (>40%) and the reliability issues associated with traditional prognostic markers, the purpose of this study is to investigate planning computed tomography (pCT)-based radiomics for the long-term prognostication of high-risk localized PCa patients who received whole pelvic radiotherapy (WPRT). This is a retrospective study with methods based on best practice procedures for radiomics research. Sixty-four patients were selected and randomly assigned to training (n = 45) and testing (n = 19) cohorts for radiomics model development with five major steps: pCT image acquisition using a Philips Big Bore CT simulator; multiple manual segmentations of clinical target volume for the prostate (CTVprostate) on the pCT images; feature extraction from the CTVprostate using PyRadiomics; feature selection for overfitting avoidance; and model development with three-fold cross-validation. The radiomics model and signature performances were evaluated based on the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) as well as accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. This study's results show that our pCT-based radiomics model was able to predict the six-year progression-free survival of the high-risk localized PCa patients who received the WPRT with highly consistent performances (mean AUC: 0.76 (training) and 0.71 (testing)). These are comparable to findings of other similar studies including those using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based radiomics. The accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of our radiomics signature that consisted of two texture features were 0.778, 0.833 and 0.556 (training) and 0.842, 0.867 and 0.750 (testing), respectively. Since CT is more readily available than MRI and is the standard-of-care modality for PCa WPRT planning, pCT-based radiomics could be used as a routine non-invasive approach to the prognostic prediction of WPRT treatment outcomes in high-risk localized PCa.

Radiomics-Clinical AI Model with Probability Weighted Strategy for Prognosis Prediction in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

In this study, we propose a radiomics clinical probability-weighted model for the prediction of prognosis for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The model combines radiomics features extracted from radiotherapy (RT) planning images with clinical factors such as age, gender, histology, and tumor stage. CT images with radiotherapy structures of 422 NSCLC patients were retrieved from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA). Radiomic features were extracted from gross tumor volumes (GTVs). Five machine learning algorithms, namely decision trees (DT), random forests (RF), extreme boost (EB), support vector machine (SVM) and generalized linear model (GLM) were optimized by a voted ensemble machine learning (VEML) model. A probabilistic weighted approach is used to incorporate the uncertainty associated with both radiomic and clinical features and to generate a probabilistic risk score for each patient. The performance of the model is evaluated using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC). The Radiomic model, clinical factor model, and combined radiomic clinical probability-weighted model demonstrated good performance in predicting NSCLC survival with AUC of 0.941, 0.856 and 0.949, respectively. The combined radiomics clinical probability-weighted enhanced model achieved significantly better performance than the radiomic model in 1-year survival prediction (chi-square test, p < 0.05). The proposed model has the potential to improve NSCLC prognosis and facilitate personalized treatment decisions.