Radiomic Features As Biomarkers of Soft Tissue Paediatric Sarcomas: Preliminary Results of a PET/MR Study

BACKGROUND: Pediatric soft tissue sarcomas are rare tumors with rhabdomyosarcoma being the most frequent histotype. Diagnostic imaging plays a significant role in the evaluation of this type of tumors. Thus, aim of this study was to assess the prognostic and diagnostic value of radiomic features extracted from axial T2w images of the primary lesion in children with soft tissue sarcomas examined by PET/MR for staging. METHODS: Using an open source software, each lesion was segmented and 33 radiomic features then extracted. Factor and logistic regression analyses were applied to select highly correlating features and evaluate their prognostic role, respectively. Differences in radiomic, demographics, metabolic, and laboratory variables according to tumor grade and histotype were investigated by the Students’ and Chi-square tests. In case of differences the diagnostic value of the variable/s was assessed by receiver operating curves. RESULTS: Eighteen children (11 female; mean age 7.8 ± 4.6-year-old) matched the inclusion criteria. The factor analysis allowed the selection of five highly correlating features which, according to regression analysis, did not influence the outcome (p > 0.05, each). The feature lmc1 was significantly higher in low grade lesions (p = 0.045) and showed 70.4% accuracy in classifying high grade tumors while the feature variance was significantly lower in rhabdomyosarcomas (p = 0.008) and showed 83.3% accuracy for this histotype. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, our preliminary results suggest that specific radiomic features may act as biomarkers of pediatric soft tissue sarcoma grade and histotype.