WE-E-17A-02: Predictive Modeling of Outcome Following SABR for NSCLC Based On Radiomics of FDG-PET Images

Purpose: This study aims to develop predictive models of patient outcome by extracting advanced imaging features (i.e., Radiomics) from FDG-PET images. Methods: We acquired pre-treatment PET scans for 51 stage I NSCLC patients treated with SABR. We calculated 139 quantitative features from each patient PET image, including 5 morphological features, 8 statistical features, 27 texture features, and 100 features from the intensity-volume histogram. Based on the imaging features, we aim to distinguish between 2 risk groups of patients: those with regional failure or distant metastasis versus those without. We investigated 3 pattern classification algorithms: linear discriminant analysis (LDA), naive Bayes (NB), and logistic regression (LR). To avoid the curse of dimensionality, we performed feature selection by first removing redundant features and then applying sequential forward selection using the wrapper approach. To evaluate the predictive performance, we performed 10-fold cross validation with 1000 random splits of the data and calculated the area under the ROC curve (AUC). Results: Feature selection identified 2 texture features (homogeneity and/or wavelet decompositions) for NB and LR, while for LDA SUVmax and one texture feature (correlation) were identified. All 3 classifiers achieved statistically significant improvements over conventional PET imaging metrics such as tumor volume (AUC = 0.668) and SUVmax (AUC = 0.737). Overall, NB achieved the best predictive performance (AUC = 0.806). This also compares favorably with MTV using the best threshold at an SUV of 11.6 (AUC = 0.746). At a sensitivity of 80%, NB achieved 69% specificity, while SUVmax and tumor volume only had 36% and 47% specificity. Conclusion: Through a systematic analysis of advanced PET imaging features, we are able to build models with improved predictive value over conventional imaging metrics. If validated in a large independent cohort, the proposed techniques could potentially aid in identifying patients who might benefit from adjuvant therapy