Multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging-derived deep learning network to determine ferroptosis-related gene signatures in gliomas

INTRODUCTION: Ferroptosis-related gene (FRG) signature is important for assessing novel therapeutic approaches and prognosis in glioma. We trained a deep learning network for determining FRG signatures using multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). METHODS: FRGs of patients with glioma were acquired from public databases. FRG-related risk score stratifying prognosis was developed from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and validated using the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas. Multiparametric MRI-derived glioma images and the corresponding genomic information were obtained for 122 cases from TCGA and The Cancer Imaging Archive. The deep learning network was trained using 3D-Resnet, and threefold cross-validation was performed to evaluate the predictive performance. RESULTS: The FRG-related risk score was associated with poor clinicopathological features and had a high predictive value for glioma prognosis. Based on the FRG-related risk score, patients with glioma were successfully classified into two subgroups (28 and 94 in the high- and low-risk groups, respectively). The deep learning networks TC (enhancing tumor and non-enhancing portion of the tumor core) mask achieved an average cross-validation accuracy of 0.842 and an average AUC of 0.781, while the deep learning networks WT (whole tumor and peritumoral edema) mask achieved an average cross-validation accuracy of 0.825 and an average AUC of 0.781. DISCUSSION: Our findings indicate that FRG signature is a prognostic indicator of glioma. In addition, we developed a deep learning network that has high classification accuracy in automatically determining FRG signatures, which may be an important step toward the clinical translation of novel therapeutic approaches and prognosis of glioma.