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CT Radiomics in Thoracic Oncology: Technique and Clinical Applications

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Abstract

Precision medicine offers better treatment options and improved survival for cancer patients based on individual variability. As the success of precision medicine depends on robust biomarkers, the requirement for improved imaging biomarkers that reflect tumor biology has grown exponentially. Radiomics, the field of study in which high-throughput data are generated and large amounts of advanced quantitative features are extracted from medical images, has shown great potential as a source of quantitative biomarkers in the field of oncology. Radiomics provides quantitative information about the morphology, texture, and intratumoral heterogeneity of the tumor itself as well as features related to pulmonary function. Hence, radiomics data can be used to build descriptive and predictive clinical models that relate imaging characteristics to tumor biology phenotypes. In this review, we describe the workflow of CT radiomics, types of CT radiomics, and its clinical application in thoracic oncology.

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Author notes

  1. Geewon Lee and So Hyeon Bak contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology and Center for Imaging Science, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 81, Irwon-Ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, 06351, South Korea

    Geewon Lee, So Hyeon Bak & Ho Yun Lee

  2. Department of Radiology and Medical Research Institute, Pusan National University Hospital, Pusan National University School of Medicine, Busan, South Korea

    Geewon Lee

  3. Department of Radiology, Kangwon National University Hospital, Chuncheon, South Korea

    So Hyeon Bak

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  1. Geewon Lee
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Correspondence to Ho Yun Lee.

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Conflict of Interest

Geewon Lee, So Hyeon Bak, and Ho Yun Lee declare that they have no conflict of interest. This research was supported by the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare (HI17C0086) and by National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grants funded by the Korean government (MSIP; Ministry of Science, ICT, & Future Planning) (No. NRF-2016R1A2B4013046 and NRF-2017M2A2A7A02018568).

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Lee, G., Bak, S.H. & Lee, H.Y. CT Radiomics in Thoracic Oncology: Technique and Clinical Applications. Nucl Med Mol Imaging 52, 91–98 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13139-017-0506-5

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