Radiomics approaches in gastric cancer: a frontier in clinical decision making

OBJECTIVE: To review the application of radiomics in gastric cancer and its challenges as well as future prospects. DATA SOURCES: A research for relevant studies were performed in PubMed with the terms of “radiomics,” “texture analysis,” and “gastric cancer.” The search was updated until February 28(th), 2019. STUDY SELECTION: All original articles regarding the investigation of texture analysis or radiomics in gastric cancer were retrieved. Only papers written in English were included. RESULTS: A total of 17 original articles were selected in final. It is shown that radiomics has yielded moderate to excellent performance in a spectrum of respects including differential diagnosis, assessment of histological differential degree, evaluation of tumor stage, prediction of response to therapy, and prognosis in gastric cancer. Yet, a number of challenges are facing both radiomics itself and its application in gastric cancer. CONCLUSIONS: Radiomics holds great potential in facilitating decision-making in gastric cancer. With the standardization of work-flow and advancement of machine learning methods, radiomics is expected to make great breakthroughs in precision medicine of gastric cancer.