Development and validation of a CT-texture analysis nomogram for preoperatively differentiating thymic epithelial tumor histologic subtypes

BACKGROUND: Thymic epithelial tumors (TETs) are the most common primary tumors in the anterior mediastinum, which have considerable histologic heterogeneity. This study aimed to develop and validate a nomogram based on computed tomography (CT) and texture analysis (TA) for preoperatively predicting the pathological classifications for TET patients. METHODS: Totally TET 172 patients confirmed by postoperative pathology between January 2011 to April 2019 were retrospectively analyzed and randomly divided into training (n = 120) and validation (n = 52) cohorts. Preoperative clinical factors, CT signs and texture features of each patient were analyzed, and prediction models were developed using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression. The performance of the models was evaluated and compared by the area under receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) and the DeLong test. The clinical application value of the models was determined via the decision curve analysis (DCA). Then, a nomogram was developed based on the model with the best predictive efficiency and clinical utility and validated using the calibration plots. RESULTS: Totally 87 patients with low-risk TET (LTET) (types A, AB, B1) and 85 patients with high-risk TET (HTET) (types B2, B3, C) were enrolled in this study. We separately constructed 4 prediction models for differentiating LTET from HTET using clinical, CT, texture features, and their combination. These 4 prediction models achieved AUCs of 0.66, 0.79, 0.82, 0.88 in the training cohort and 0.64, 0.82, 0.86, 0.94 in the validation cohort, respectively. The DeLong test and DCA showed that the Combined model, consisting of 2 CT signs and 2 texture parameters, held the highest predictive efficiency and clinical utility (p < 0.05). A prediction nomogram was subsequently developed using the 4 independently risk factors from the Combined model. The calibration curves indicated a good consistency between the actual observations and nomogram predictions for differentiating TET classifications. CONCLUSION: A prediction nomogram incorporating both the CT and texture parameters was constructed and validated in our study, which can be conveniently used for the preoperative individualized prediction of the simplified histologic subtypes in TET patients.