Radiogenomics of lung cancer

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are aiding in improving sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic imaging. The rapid adoption of these advanced ML algorithms is transforming imaging analysis; taking us from noninvasive detection of pathology to noninvasive precise diagnosis of the pathology by identifying whether detected abnormality is a secondary to infection, inflammation and/or neoplasm. This is led to the emergence of “Radiobiogenomics”; referring to the concept of identifying biologic (genomic, proteomic) alterations in the detected lesion. Radiobiogenomic involves image segmentation, feature extraction, and ML model to predict underlying tumor genotype and clinical outcomes. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer related death worldwide. There are several histologic subtypes of lung cancer, e.g., small cell lung cancer (SCLC), non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma). These variable histologic subtypes not only appear different at microscopic level, but these also differ at genetic and transcription level. This intrinsic heterogeneity reveals itself as different morphologic appearances on diagnostic imaging, such as CT, PET/CT and MRI. Traditional evaluation of imaging findings of lung cancer is limited to morphologic characteristics, such as lesion size, margins, density. Radiomics takes image analysis a step further by looking at imaging phenotype with higher order statistics in efforts to quantify intralesional heterogeneity. This heterogeneity, in turn, can be potentially used to extract intralesional genomic and proteomic data. This review aims to highlight novel concepts in ML and AI and their potential applications in identifying radiobiogenomics of lung cancer.