Computed Tomography-Based Radiomics for Differentiation of Thymic Epithelial Tumors and Lymphomas in Anterior Mediastinum

Objective To investigate the differential diagnostic performance of computed tomography (CT)-based radiomics in thymic epithelial tumors (TETs) and lymphomas in anterior mediastinum. Methods There were 149 patients with TETs and 93 patients with lymphomas enrolled. These patients were assigned to a training set (n = 171) and an external validation set (n = 71). Dedicated radiomics prototype software was used to segment lesions on preoperative chest enhanced CT images and extract features. The multivariable logistic regression algorithm was used to construct three models according to clinico-radiologic features, radiomics features, and combined features, respectively. Performance of the three models was compared by using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs). Decision curve analysis was used to evaluate clinical utility of the three models. Results For clinico-radiologic model, radiomics signature model, and combined model, the AUCs were 0.860, 0.965, 0.975 and 0.843, 0.961, 0.955 in the training cohort and the test cohort, respectively (all P<0.05). The accuracies of each model were 0.836, 0.895, 0.918 and 0.845, 0.901, 0.859 in the two cohorts, respectively (all P<0.05). Compared with the clinico-radiologic model, better diagnostic performances were found in the radiomics signature model and the combined model. Conclusions Radiomics signature model and combined model exhibit outstanding and comparable differential diagnostic performances between TETs and lymphomas. The CT-based radiomics analysis might serve as an effective tool for accurately differentiating TETs from lymphomas before treatment.