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Radiomics analysis of [18F]-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography for the prediction of cervical lymph node metastasis in tongue squamous cell carcinoma

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A Correction to this article was published on 11 June 2022

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Abstract

Objectives

This study aimed to create a predictive model for cervical lymph node metastasis (CLNM) in patients with tongue squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) based on radiomics features detected by [18F]-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET).

Methods

A total of 40 patients with tongue SCC who underwent 18F-FDG PET imaging during their first medical examination were enrolled. During the follow-up period (mean 28 months), 20 patients had CLNM, including six with late CLNM, whereas the remaining 20 patients did not have CLNM. Radiomics features were extracted from 18F-FDG PET images of all patients irrespective of metal artifact, and clinicopathological factors were obtained from the medical records. Late CLNM was defined as the CLNM that occurred after major treatment. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) model was used for radiomics feature selection and sequential data fitting. The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to assess the predictive performance of the 18F-FDG PET-based model and clinicopathological factors model (CFM) for CLNM.

Results

Six radiomics features were selected from LASSO analysis. The average values of the area under the curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of radiomics analysis for predicting CLNM from 18F-FDG PET images were 0.79, 0.68, 0.65, and 0.70, respectively. In contrast, those of the CFM were 0.54, 0.60, 0.60, and 0.60, respectively. The 18F-FDG PET-based model showed significantly higher AUC than that of the CFM.

Conclusions

The 18F-FDG PET-based model has better potential for diagnosing CLNM and predicting late CLNM in patients with tongue SCC than the CFM.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, TK, upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Noriaki Takeda and Dr. Makoto Fukui for their scientific advice.

Funding

This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific-Research (Grant number 19K10268).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Oral Surgery, Tokushima University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Kuramoto-cho, Tokushima, Japan

    Takaharu Kudoh, Keiko Kudoh, Akira Takahashi & Youji Miyamoto

  2. Department of Medical Image Informatics, Tokushima University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Kuramoto-cho, Tokushima, Japan

    Akihiro Haga

  3. Department of Therapeutic Radiology, Tokushima University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Kuramoto-cho, Tokushima, Japan

    Motoharu Sasaki & Hitoshi Ikushima

  4. Department of Oral Bioscience, Tokushima University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Kuramoto-cho, Tokushima, Japan

    Yasusei Kudo

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  1. Takaharu Kudoh
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by TK, AH, KK, AT, MS, YK, HI, and YM. The first draft of the manuscript was written by TK, and all authors commented on the previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Takaharu Kudoh.

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Tokushima University (approval number 3212, date of approval July 23, 2018), and the study protocol was performed in accordance to the Declaration of Helsinki.

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The requirement for informed consent was waived by the institutional review board owing to the retrospective nature of the study.

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Kudoh, T., Haga, A., Kudoh, K. et al. Radiomics analysis of [18F]-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography for the prediction of cervical lymph node metastasis in tongue squamous cell carcinoma. Oral Radiol 39, 41–50 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11282-022-00600-7

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