The Role of Preoperative Computed Tomography Radiomics in Distinguishing Benign and Malignant Tumors of the Parotid Gland

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop and validate an integrated prediction model based on clinicoradiological data and computed tomography (CT)-radiomics for differentiating between benign and malignant parotid gland (PG) tumors via multicentre cohorts. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cohort of 87 PG tumor patients from hospital #1 who were diagnosed between January 2017 and January 2020 were used for prediction model training. A total of 378 radiomic features were extracted from a single tumor region of interest (ROI) of each patient on each phase of CT images. Imaging features were extracted from plain CT and contrast-enhanced CT (CECT) images. After dimensionality reduction, a radiomics signature was constructed. A combination model was constructed by incorporating the rad-score and CT radiological features. An independent group of 38 patients from hospital #2 was used to validate the prediction models. The model performances were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, and decision curve analysis (DCA) was used to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of the models. The radiomics signature model was constructed and the rad-score was calculated based on selected imaging features from plain CT and CECT images. RESULTS: Analysis of variance and multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that location, lymph node metastases, and rad-score were independent predictors of tumor malignant status. The ROC curves showed that the accuracy of the support vector machine (SVM)-based prediction model, radiomics signature, location and lymph node status in the training set was 0.854, 0.772, 0.679, and 0.632, respectively; specificity was 0.869, 0.878, 0.734, and 0.773; and sensitivity was 0.731, 0.808, 0.723, and 0.742. In the test set, the accuracy was 0.835, 0.771, 0.653, and 0.608, respectively; the specificity was 0.741, 0.889, 0.852, and 0.812; and the sensitivity was 0.818, 0.790, 0.731, and 0.716. CONCLUSIONS: The combination model based on the radiomics signature and CT radiological features is capable of evaluating the malignancy of PG tumors and can help clinicians guide clinical tumor management.