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External validation of an 18F-FDG-PET radiomic model predicting survival after radiotherapy for oropharyngeal cancer

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European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose/objective

The purpose of the study is to externally validate published 18F-FDG-PET radiomic models for outcome prediction in patients with oropharyngeal cancer treated with chemoradiotherapy.

Material/methods

Outcome data and pre-radiotherapy PET images of 100 oropharyngeal cancer patients (stage IV:78) treated with concomitant chemotherapy to 66–69 Gy/30 fr were available. Tumors were segmented using a previously validated semi-automatic method; 450 radiomic features (RF) were extracted according to IBSI (Image Biomarker Standardization Initiative) guidelines. Only one model for cancer-specific survival (CSS) prediction was suitable to be independently tested, according to our criteria. This model, in addition to HPV status, SUVmean and SUVmax, included two independent meta-factors (Fi), resulting from combining selected RF clusters. In a subgroup of 66 patients with complete HPV information, the global risk score R was computed considering the original coefficients and was tested by Cox regression as predictive of CSS. Independently, only the radiomic risk score RF derived from Fi was tested on the same subgroup to learn about the radiomics contribution to the model. The metabolic tumor volume (MTV) was also tested as a single predictor and its prediction performances were compared to the global and radiomic models. Finally, the validation of MTV and the radiomic score RF were also tested on the entire dataset.

Results

Regarding the analysis of the subgroup with HPV information, with a median follow-up of 41.6 months, seven patients died due to cancer. R was confirmed to be associated to CSS (p value = 0.05) with a C-index equal 0.75 (95% CI=0.62–0.85). The best cut-off value (equal to 0.15) showed high ability in patient stratification (p=0.01, HR=7.4, 95% CI=1.6–11.4). The 5-year CSS for R were 97% (95% CI: 93–100%) vs 74% (56–92%) for low- and high-risk groups, respectively. RF and MTV alone were also significantly associated to CSS for the subgroup with an almost identical C-index. According to best cut-off value (RF>0.12 and MTV>15.5cc), the 5-year CSS were 96% (95% CI: 89–100%) vs 65% (36–94%) and 97% (95% CI: 88–100%) vs 77% (58–93%) for RF and MTV, respectively. Results regarding RF and MTV were confirmed in the overall group.

Conclusion

A previously published PET radiomic model for CSS prediction was independently validated. Performances of the model were similar to the ones of using only the MTV, without improvement of prediction accuracy.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

The project was supported by an AIRC (Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro) grant (IG23150).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Physics, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milano, Italy

    Martina Mori, Michela Olivieri, Antonella Del Vecchio & Claudio Fiorino

  2. Department of Radiotherapy, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milano, Italy

    Chiara Deantoni, Anna Chiara, Simone Baroni, Nadia Gisella Di Muzio & Italo Dell’Oca

  3. School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Emiliano Spezi

  4. Department of Medical Physics, Velindre Cancer Centre, Cardiff, UK

    Emiliano Spezi

  5. Department of Nuclear Medicine, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy

    Maria Picchio

  6. Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy

    Maria Picchio & Nadia Gisella Di Muzio

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  1. Martina Mori
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by M Mori, C Deantoni, M Olivieri, A Chiara, S Baroni, C Fiorino, and I Dell’Oca. The first draft of the manuscript was written by M Mori and C Fiorino, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudio Fiorino.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of San Raffaele Scientific Institute (March 10th, 2022/N° 12/INT/2022).

Consent to participate/to publish

Written informed consent for the execution of PET/CT and anonymous publication of disease-related information was signed by each patient.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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 This article is part of the Topical Collection on Advanced Image Analyses (Radiomics and Artificial Intelligence)

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Mori, M., Deantoni, C., Olivieri, M. et al. External validation of an 18F-FDG-PET radiomic model predicting survival after radiotherapy for oropharyngeal cancer. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 50, 1329–1336 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-022-06098-9

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