Development and Validation of an MRI Radiomics-Based Signature to Predict Histological Grade in Patients with Invasive Breast Cancer

BACKGROUND: Histological grade is an important factor in the overall prognosis of patients with invasive breast cancer. Therefore, the non-invasive assessment of histological grade in breast cancer patients is an increasing concern for clinicians. We aimed to establish an MRI-based radiomics model for preoperative prediction of invasive breast cancer histological grade. METHODS: We enrolled 901 patients with invasive breast cancer and pre-operative MRI. Patients were randomly divided into the training cohort (n=630) and validation cohort (n=271) with a ratio of 7:3. A radiomics signature was constructed by extracting radiomics features from MRI images and was developed according to multivariate logistic regression analysis. The diagnostic performance of the radiomics model was assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. RESULTS: Of the 901 patients, 618 (68.6%) were histological grade 1 or 2 while 283 (31.4%) were histological grade 3. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of the radiomics model for the prediction of the histological grade was 0.761 (95% CI 0.728–0.794) in the training cohort and 0.722 (95% CI 0.664–0.777) in the validation cohort. The decision curve analysis (DCA) demonstrated the radiomics model’s clinical application value. CONCLUSION: This is a preliminary study suggesting that the development of an MRI-based radiomics model can predict the histological grade of invasive breast cancer.