Radiomics model based on contrast-enhanced CT texture features for pretreatment prediction of overall survival in esophageal neuroendocrine carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Limited studies have observed the prognostic value of CT images for esophageal neuroendocrine carcinoma (NEC) due to rare incidence and low treatment experience in clinical. In this study, the pretreatment enhanced CT texture features and clinical characteristics were investigated to predict the overall survival of esophageal NEC. METHODS: This retrospective study included 89 patients with esophageal NEC. The training and testing cohorts comprised 61 (70%) and 28 (30%) patients, respectively. A total of 402 radiomics features were extracted from the tumor region that segmented pretreatment venous phase CT images. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression was applied to feature dimension reduction, feature selection, and radiomics signature construction. A radiomics nomogram was constructed based on the radiomics signature and clinical risk factors using a multivariable Cox proportional regression. The performance of the nomogram for the pretreatment prediction of overall survival (OS) was evaluated for discrimination and calibration. RESULTS: Only the enhancement degree was an independent factor in clinical variable influenced OS. The radiomics signatures demonstrated good predictability for prognostic status discrimination. The radiomics nomogram integrating texture signatures was slightly superior to the nomogram derived from the combined model with a C-index of 0.844 (95%CI: 0.783-0.905) and 0.847 (95% CI: 0.782-0.912) in the training set, and 0.805 (95%CI: 0.707-0.903) and 0.745 (95% CI: 0.639-0.851) in the testing set, respectively. CONCLUSION: The radiomics nomogram based on pretreatment CT radiomics signature had better prognostic power and predictability of the overall survival in patients with esophageal NEC than the model using combined variables.