Radiomics analysis of baseline F-FDG PET/CT images for improved prognosis in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

The purpose of this study is to investigate the prognostic performance of radiomics features on nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients imaged with baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT. 128 NPC patients were retrospectively enrolled with 3348 radiomics features and 13 clinical features. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to estimate progression-free survival (PFS), and log-rank test was used to screen the significant features. Cox proportional hazards regression modal with forward stepwise feature selection was adopted to identify independent predictors of PFS. 24 radiomics features and 8 clinical features were found to be significantly associated with PFS in univariate analysis. Radiomics features HGZE_GLSZM_HLL_32 (p=0.0061, HR: 0.66, 95%CI: 0.49–0.89), as well as clinical features N-stage, M-stage, antibody VCA-IgA and platelet count (PLT) retained the independent prognostic significance for PFS in multivariate analysis. Overall, radiomics features can provide complementary prognostic information for NPC patients imaged with baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT compared to clinical features.

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