- Radiomics in hepatocellular carcinoma
-
Yunus Soleymani,1,*
1. Department of Radiology, Paramedical Faculty, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran, Orcid.org/0000-0002-7374-5105
- Introduction: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common liver cancer that mostly occurs in patients with chronic liver disease such as cirrhosis or severe fibrosis. Its major causes are chronic liver disease due to chronic hepatitis B and C virus infection or metabolic liver disease. HCC often becomes symptomatic only at an advanced stage when curative treatments are no longer possible. Therefore, the prognosis of HCC remains unsatisfactory.
Radiomics is an emerging field which extracts quantitative radiology data from medical images and explores their correlation with clinical outcomes in a non-invasive manner. It aims to quantify the morphological appearance of the tumor, i.e., its imaging phenotype, using mathematically defined quantitative features.
The aim of this study was to investigate whether radiomics is a useful and prognostic method for clinical management of hepatocellular carcinoma
- Methods: In this study, we reviewed and searched for the keywords "hepatocellular carcinoma", "HCC", "medical imaging" and "radiomics" in the scientific databases of Science Direct, PubMed and Google Scholar. About 10 fully relevant articles were found and reviewed.
- Results: Several medical imaging modalities such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography were used for radiomics features extraction. The results of all studies showed that the heterogeneity, grade, and malignancy of HCC lesions can be assessed with high accuracy by using radiomics analysis of medical images. Also, the combination of mathematical radiomics features with clinical genomic features can lead to better results.
- Conclusion: Radiomics is a completely non-invasive method and can be a complementing or replacing approach for tumor biopsies, as well as for developing novel prognostic biomarkers in HCC patients in the near future.
- Keywords: radiomics, hepatocellular carcinoma, medical imaging