Radiomics-Derived Data by Contrast Enhanced Magnetic Resonance in RAS Mutations Detection in Colorectal Liver Metastases

Abstract

<i>Purpose</i>: To assess the association of RAS mutation status and radiomics-derived data by Contrast Enhanced-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (CE-MRI) in liver metastases. <i>Materials and Methods</i>: 76 patients (36 women and 40 men; 59 years of mean age and 36-80 years as range) were included in this retrospective study. Texture metrics and parameters based on lesion morphology were calculated. Per-patient univariate and multivariate analysis were made. Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney U test, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, pattern recognition approaches with features selection approaches were considered. <i>Results</i>: Significant results were obtained for texture features while morphological parameters had not significant results to classify RAS mutation. The results showed that using a univariate analysis was not possible to discriminate accurately the RAS mutation status. Instead, considering a multivariate analysis and classification approaches, a KNN exclusively with texture parameters as predictors reached the best results (AUC of 0.84 and an accuracy of 76.9% with 90.0% of sensitivity and 67.8% of specificity on training set and an accuracy of 87.5% with 91.7% of sensitivity and 83.3% of specificity on external validation cohort). <i>Conclusions</i>: Texture parameters derived by CE-MRI and combined using multivariate analysis and patter recognition approaches could allow stratifying the patients according to RAS mutation status.