Applying Radiomics to Predict Pathology of Postchemotherapy Retroperitoneal Nodal Masses in Germ Cell Tumors.

PURPOSE: After chemotherapy, approximately 50% of patients with metastatic testicular germ cell tumors (GCTs) who undergo retroperitoneal lymph node dissections (RPNLDs) for residual masses have fibrosis. Radiomics uses image processing techniques to extract quantitative textures/features from regions of interest (ROIs) to train a classifier that predicts outcomes. We hypothesized that radiomics would identify patients with a high likelihood of fibrosis who may avoid RPLND. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients with GCT who had an RPLND for nodal masses > 1 cm after first-line platinum chemotherapy were included. Preoperative contrast-enhanced axial computed tomography images of retroperitoneal ROIs were manually contoured. Radiomics features (n = 153) were used to train a radial basis function support vector machine classifier to discriminate between viable GCT/mature teratoma versus fibrosis. A nested 10-fold cross-validation protocol was used to determine classifier accuracy. Clinical variables/restricted size criteria were used to optimize the classifier.
RESULTS: Seventy-seven patients with 102 ROIs were analyzed (GCT, 21; teratoma, 41; fibrosis, 40). The discriminative accuracy of radiomics to identify GCT/teratoma versus fibrosis was 72 ± 2.2% (area under the curve [AUC], 0.74 ± 0.028); sensitivity was 56.2 ± 15.0%, and specificity was 81.9 ± 9.0% ( P = .001). No major predictive differences were identified when data were restricted by varying maximal axial diameters (AUC range, 0.58 ± 0.05 to 0.74 ± 0.03). The prediction algorithm using clinical variables alone identified an AUC of 0.76. When these variables were added to the radiomics signature, the best performing classifier was identified when axial masses were limited to diameter < 2 cm (accuracy, 88.2 ± 4.4; AUC, 0.80 ± 0.05; P = .02).
CONCLUSION: A predictive radiomics algorithm had a discriminative accuracy of 72% that improved to 88% when combined with clinical predictors. Additional independent validation is required to assess whether radiomics allows patients with a high predicted likelihood of fibrosis to avoid RPLND.

INTRODUCTION

Multimodal treatment has dramatically increased the likelihood of cure in metastatic germ cell tumor (GCT), and the reduction of treatment morbidity is an important survivorship imperative. The standard of care for patients with metastatic nonseminoma GCT (NSGCT) is cisplatin-based chemotherapy followed by postchemotherapy retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (pcRPLND) for patients with residual nodal masses. These residual nodal masses occur in approximately 40% of patients treated with chemotherapy, and surgery is indicated if postchemotherapy axial nodal measurements are > 1 cm in the setting of marker plateau or normalization.[1] The goal of surgery is to remove residual mature teratoma or viable GCT found in 30% to 40% and 5% to 10% of surgical specimens, respectively.[2,3] Thus, approximately 50% of patients who undergo pcRPLND are found to have fibrosis/necrotic tissue alone. Because pcRPLND is associated with short- and long-term complications, such as time off from work, anesthetic risks, vascular complications, retrograde ejaculation, hernia, abdominal scarring, and chylous ascites,[4] better discriminators are needed to differentiate between patients who require pcRPLND for detection of residual disease and those who do not.

Standard imaging with computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging cannot reliably differentiate fibrosis from mature teratoma or viable GCT. Baseline clinical and pathologic factors have been investigated in their ability to detect residual active disease, including the presence of teratoma in the primary tumor, prechemotherapy tumor marker level, prechemotherapy nodal size, and interval size reduction during chemotherapy.[2,5-8] However, no predictive algorithm is sufficiently sensitive to be used routinely in clinical practice beyond residual nodal size.[5,9]

The field of radiomics focuses on improving quantitative analysis of medical images by using automated high-throughput extraction.[10] Texture analysis typically involves the accumulation of multidimensional histograms of image intensities. A large number of nonlinear metrics are computed from these distributions that measure properties like heterogeneity, directionality, and entropy and produce a large set of features that can subsequently be tested for accuracy in predicting treatment outcomes, even if the physiologic underpinnings are unknown. This approach is supported by research that demonstrates spatial variation of protein expression within tumors, which correlates to radiophenotypes in CT data.[11] A radiomics approach to assessing retroperitoneal nodes is particularly well suited in GCT given that NSGCTs exhibit histomorphologic heterogeneity with various regions of teratoma, yolk sac, embryonal carcinoma, and choriocarcinoma that can be identified in both the primary tumor and the nodal metastasis. Thus, we hypothesized that radiomics would identify patients with a high likelihood of fibrosis who may avoid RPLND.

PATIENT AND METHODS

The study aim was to determine whether texture features from postchemotherapy CT images can correctly discriminate between fibrosis and teratoma/GCT in patients who had undergone pcRPLND after first-line platinum-based chemotherapy for metastatic NSGCT.

Patient Selection

This single-institution, retrospective study included patients diagnosed with NSGCT between January 1, 1995, and October 31, 2014, who had residual retroperitoneal masses after frontline cisplatin-based chemotherapy and who had undergone pcRPLND. The inclusion criteria were NSGCT histology with normalization or plateau of tumor markers after frontline cisplatin-based chemotherapy, residual nodal size > 1 cm on CT imaging measured through transverse axial dimension, and pathology from RPLND along with pre- and postchemotherapy CT imaging. Patients were excluded if they had a noncontrast CT scan or the investigators could not correlate the nodal mass on CT imaging with the pathology report. Patients were identified from an institutional testicular cancer database after research ethics board approval. Selected patients represented all three possible pathologic outcomes from their pcRPLND (teratoma, necrosis/fibrosis, viable GCT).

Image Acquisition

Contrast-enhanced CT imaging of the abdomen and pelvis was performed with nonionic intravenous contrast (Appendix). Regions-of-interest (ROIs) were drawn circumferentially around each postchemotherapy residual nodal mass by two study team members (J.L., J.H.) after the residual nodal lesion was identified on the template RPLND pathology report and correlated with imaging.

Texture Metrics

A set of 11 first-order and 142 second-order texture metrics were generated from each volume of interest (VOI), which comprised a set of two-dimensional ROIs that occupied a contiguous range of slices and overlapped from one slice to the next. The first-order metrics consisted of the 11 image intensity percentiles from each VOI and ranged from 0% (the minimum value) to 100% (the maximum value) with nine steps of 10% in between. These metrics provided a characterization of the one-dimensional image intensity histogram shape.

Before computing the 142 second-order texture metrics, the intensities within each VOI were binned into 32 equal-sized bins that spanned the range of image intensities between the first and 99th percentiles. The binning was conducted to minimize histogram noise when computing second-order texture metrics, whereas the use of image intensities between the first and 99th percentiles minimized the effect of outliers on the bin layout. The second-order texture features consisted of metrics from four classes computed from multidimensional histograms as follows: mean and range of the 13 Haralick texture features computed from the grayscale co-occurrence matrix[12] taken over all 13 neighbor orientations[13] on the three-dimensional lattice, five features based on the neighborhood gray tone difference matrix,[14] 10 features from the gray-level run-length matrix,[15] and the same 10 features from the gray-level size-zone matrix.[16] Repetition of these groups at multiple resolutions produced the full set of 142 second order features.

Machine Learning Algorithm

A nested 10-fold cross-validation protocol was used to determine classifier accuracy. Restricted axial and radial size criteria and clinically meaningful variables used in previous prediction algorithms were used to optimize the classifier (teratoma in primary, prechemotherapy tumor marker level, pre- and postchemotherapy mass size).[2,5-8] Additional details of the radiomics algorithm are described in the Appendix.

Statistical Analysis

Descriptive statistics were used to summarize baseline demographics. Machine learning protocol and other statistical analysis are described in the Appendix. Assessment of clinical variables to predict pathologic outcomes were analyzed through a published clinical nomogram.[7] Maximum effective radii were defined as the radius of a sphere with the same nodal volume.

RESULTS

Included Population

Through the institutional database, 322 patients with NSGCT underwent pcRPLND for lesions > 1 cm of whom 167 were identified between the January 1, 2007, and October 31, 2014, where routine depositing of imaging occurred on our institutional electronic server. From these patients, we specifically selected 99 with available pathology reports and imaging. Twenty-two patients were excluded because of difficulty in localization of nodal disease (n = 7), lack of contrast (n = 3), technical difficulties in retrieving imaging (n = 3), and other reasons (n = 9; Fig 1). The final cohort of 77 patients with 102 ROIs was used for analysis (fibrosis, n = 28 [40 ROIs]; teratoma, n = 35 [42 ROIs]; GCT, n = 14 [20 ROIs]). The existing literature has reported a rate of 5% to 10% chance of residual viable GCT.[2,3] To develop a robust radiomics signature, we purposely included all patients with GCT from 2007 for analysis. Thus, residual GCTs in this cohort were over-represented and identified in 14 (18%) of 77 patients (Table 1). The characteristics of the patient population and ROIs are listed in Table 1. The mean size of the retroperitoneal masses were smaller for patients with fibrosis (46 mm) than for those with GCTs (63 mm) and teratomas (66 mm; P = .10).

Fig 1.

Patient flow diagram. GCT, germ cell tumor.

Table 1.

Patient Characteristics and ROIs

Radiomics Signature

The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for the three binary configurations that used the full 102 ROIs are shown in Figure 2. For the teratoma versus GCT/fibrosis configuration, the classifier achieved a mean accuracy of 75.4 ± 2.1% in 100 repetitions of the nested 10-fold cross-validation protocol, which corresponds to a sensitivity of 63.0 ± 8.6%, specificity of 83.8 ± 5.0%, and area under the curve (AUC) of 0.77 ± 0.023 (P = .001). For the GCT versus teratoma/fibrosis configuration, the classifier achieved a mean accuracy of 79.6 ± 0.4%, which corresponds to a sensitivity of 1.52 ± 3.76%, specificity of 99.9 ± 0.6%, and AUC of 0.53 ± 0.056 (P = .31). Finally, for the most clinically meaningful scenario of fibrosis versus teratoma/GCT configuration, the classifier achieved a mean accuracy of 71.7 ± 2.2%, which corresponds to a sensitivity of 56.2 ± 15.0%, specificity of 81.9 ± 9.0%, and AUC of 0.74 ± 0.028 (P = .001). In assessing the distribution of accuracies for individual nodes, we assessed the performance of the 102 ROIs over the 100 repetitions. Over the entire data set, only two nodes were classified correctly 100% of the time, and none were classified incorrectly more than two thirds of the time (Appendix Fig A1). Of the 41 nodes with teratoma, > 80% were classified correctly more than half of the time, whereas of the 40 nodes with fibrosis, 88% were classified correctly more than half of the time, but only 43% were classified correctly more than half of the time for the nodes with GCT.

Fig 2.

Receiver operating characteristic curves for radiomics classifier discrimination among three different binary configurations: teratoma (T) versus germ cell tumor (GCT)/fibrosis (F) (blue line); F versus T/GCT (gold line); GCT versus F/T (gray line). For F versus T/GCT, the classifier achieved a mean accuracy of 71.7 ± 2.2%, which corresponds to a sensitivity of 56.2 ± 15.0% and a specificity of 81.9 ± 9.0% with an area under the curve of 0.74 ± 0.028 (P = .001).

Fig A1.

Illustration of classification accuracy for each of the 102 regions of interest (ROIs) over each of the three × 100 randomized trials, 100 for each of the three binary configurations. For the purposes of this figure, the two classes within each configuration are termed positive for the singlet class that contains only one type of lesion and negative for the doublet class that contains the two remaining lesion types grouped together. Each ROI is shown with the configuration for which the type was positive. Within each binary configuration, the ROIs are sorted in order of decreasing classification accuracy demonstrated by the support vector machine classifier from left to right. For each, the full set of three × 100 trials are represented by four colored bands. The blue bands represent the trials where the ROI was in the singlet (positive) class and classified correctly; the gold bands represent the trials where the ROI was in the doublet (negative) class and classified correctly; the gray bands represent the trials where the ROI was in the singlet class and classified incorrectly; and the red bands represent the trials where the ROI was in the doublet class and classified incorrectly. F, fibrosis; GCT, germ cell tumor; T, teratoma.

Finally, we assessed which radiomics features were most useful in making predictions of pathologic outcomes. For the teratoma versus GCT/fibrosis classifier, 10 of the 153 features were statistically significantly correlated with the binary outcome after a false discovery rate correction to q = 0.05. All were first-order texture features, which reflects that teratoma possesses a lower distribution of CT densities. In contrast, 98 of the 153 features were significantly correlated with outcome for the fibrosis versus teratoma/GCT configuration, and of these, the top 10 were all second-order texture features that quantitated patterns of spatial heterogeneity in CT densities rather than gross changes in magnitudes.

Restricted-Size Data Sets With and Without Clinical Variables

We next aimed to assess whether the radiomics signature had different performance across varying size diameters with or without the inclusion of clinical variables. The performance of the classifier improved as the axial diameters increased, with an AUC of 0.58 at 40-mm axial cuts that increased to 0.74 with unrestricted size criteria (Table 2; Fig 3A). This was also identified when analyzing the data using maximum effective radii (maximum radius: 15 mm, AUC, 0.57; < 25 mm, AUC, 0.70; Fig 3B). However, the AUCs also increased for lower, more-restrictive thresholds, even as the size of the data sets was sharply reduced to < 20 mm in axial cuts (AUC, 0.67) and < 10 mm in maximum radius (AUC, 0.64; Figs 3A and B). Nonetheless, the improvement achieved by maximally restricting the data sets was not enough to overtake the best performance achieved with the largest, unrestricted data sets.

Table 2.

Classifier Performance When Restricted by Maximum Axial Diameter

Fig 3.

Bar plots of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for each of the four restricted cases: (A) restricted axial diameter, (B) restricted radial diameter, (C) restricted axial diameter with clinical variables, and (D) restricted radial diameter with clinical variables. The y-axis measures the area under the curve (AUC) from 0 to 1, whereas the x-axis indicates the restriction applied to the full data set. * significant at P ≤ .05; ** significant at P = .01. Fig 3A: < 40 mm, P = .14; Fig 3B: < 10 mm, P = .06; < 15 mm, P = .24; Fig 3C: < 40 mm, P = .11; Fig 3D: < 25 mm, P = .07.

We next analyzed the performance of a published clinical nomogram[7] for patients with fully available clinical data (n = 40) and calculated the optimism-adjusted AUC using the bootstrapped procedure of Steyerberg et al.[17] Using clinical variables alone (prechemotherapy tumor markers [alpha-fetoprotein, beta-human chorionic gonadotropin, lactate dehydrogenase]), residual mass size, percentage of mass shrinkage, and presence of teratoma elements in orchiectomy specimens), we calculated an AUC of 0.76. When these clinical variables were added to the radiomics classifier (Figs 3C and D), the AUC ranged from 0.63 when analyzing axial cutoffs of < 50 mm up to the highest observed AUC of 0.80 when the analysis was restricted to the smallest residual masses (axial nodal size < 20 mm).

DISCUSSION

Although the role of pcRPLND for residual masses after platinum-based chemotherapy is well established, considerable debate continues with regard to which patients may safely avoid surgery. By using a postchemotherapy CT axial size cutoff of > 1 cm, approximately 50% of patients were found to have fibrosis alone at pcRPLND. When one limits pcRPLND to those with smaller lesions (eg, < 1 cm), the chance of viable GCT or mature teratoma is 11%.[5] As a result, most guidelines endorse surveillance of small residual postchemotherapy lesions to reduce the burden of overtreatment.[18] Kollmannsberger et al[1] reported a cohort of 161 patients with residual lesions of < 1 cm who did not undergo pcRPLND, with only 10 relapses observed over a median follow-up of 52 months. Similarly, Ehrlich et al[19] reported a cohort of patients with residual lesions < 1 cm from an Indiana University cohort managed expectantly; 12 (9%) of 141 patients experienced a relapse at a median of 15 years follow-up, and all but four successfully underwent salvage treatment. Nevertheless, others advocate for universal pcRPLND for all patients with nodal disease before platinum-based chemotherapy, irrespective of nodal size at postchemotherapy imaging, to reduce the risk of teratoma transformation, the potential toxicities of salvage chemotherapy, and the burden of surveillance imaging.[9]

Because imaging size criteria > 1 cm cannot reliably identify viable GCT or mature teratoma, several clinical prediction algorithms have been investigated.[2,5-8] The most widely used algorithm includes six clinical variables (prechemotherapy tumor markers [alpha-fetoprotein, beta-human chorionic gonadotropin, lactate dehydrogenase], residual mass size, percentage of mass shrinkage, and the presence of teratoma elements in orchiectomy specimen).[7] Despite a high discriminative accuracy (AUC range, 0.77 to 0.84),[7] this model has not been universally adopted in clinical practice because of its complexity.[20] With the use of radiomics, the current study identifies an AUC of 0.74 that improved to 0.80 in residual masses < 20 mm with the addition of clinical variables. Of note, the performance of our radiomics signature improved as the axial diameters increased, with an AUC of 0.58 at 40-mm axial cuts and 0.74 with unrestricted size criteria. This finding suggests that the modest discriminative accuracy may be related to the small sample size. However, even when limited to more-restrictive size criteria (and thus fewer patients), the data seem to show that the relationship between texture features and lesion type becomes cleaner and more deterministic when the focus of the analysis is restricted to smaller masses. Nonetheless, the improvement achieved by maximally restricting the data sets was not enough to overtake the best performance achieved with the largest, unrestricted data sets. Because we cannot entirely discount that the imbalance of nodal size in our data set among pathologic findings (fibrosis v teratoma v GCT) accounts for the variation of the classifier performance, a larger series across a range of residual nodal mass dimensions is required to optimize the radiomics signature.

There is great enthusiasm for the potential of quantitative image analysis to improve prediction of clinical outcomes.[21] Radiomics models have been built to predict histologic subtypes,[22] predict pathologic response to chemotherapy[23] and chemoradiotherapy,[24] and identify lymph node metastasis.[25] Because NSGCT is known to exhibit histomorphologic heterogeneity, a quantitative radiomics approach theoretically should augment standard practice given its ability to provide information about spatial and temporal variability. In the current radiomics data set, the predictive ability to identify mature teratoma was based on exclusively first-order texture features, which reflect the frequently cystic appearance with low-density spatial regions on CT imaging. In contrast, the top 10 features that discriminate fibrosis from teratoma/GCT were all second-order texture features, which supports the role for mathematical prediction algorithms for patterns such as spatial heterogeneity, which are impossible to describe subjectively. A radiomics approach has been criticized for problems with reproducibility, especially with variations between machines and contrast timing; difficulty with segmentation, especially with lesions that display complex margins; and problems with externally validating radiomics models. In addition, our radiomics signature did not seem to improve established clinical nomograms.[7] Thus, although the approach is novel, additional independent validation that addresses these criticisms is required to determine whether the signature can be optimized to make it clinically usable. Because the cancer radiomics field is still in its infancy, large-scale clinical application still requires data processing uniformity, harmonization of informatics infrastructure, and standardization with regard to the reporting of radiomics features.

Given the variable success of clinical and radiomics prediction methods, molecular markers hold promise with regard to their ability to detect residual disease. Molecular studies have demonstrated that levels of serum microRNAs correlate with stage of disease[26] and reduction in response to treatment in patients with metastatic disease.[27] Early reports support this by having demonstrated that plasma levels of miR-371 correlate with the presence of active germ cell malignancy in surgical specimens, with miR-371 being undetectable in any samples with no viable tumor (zero of nine) and overexpressed in 11 of 12 samples with viable GCT.[28] Future studies are required to investigate whether these molecular markers replace or complement a radiomics approach or replace standard prediction models to safely avoid pcRPLNDs in patients with low predicted risk of residual teratoma or viable GCT.

In the setting of a highly curable disease, overwhelming clinical evidence is needed to change practice; thus, the application of radiomics or molecular algorithms with high negative predictive value will not eliminate the need for ongoing surveillance imaging for patients at low risk of residual mature teratoma. In such patients, more-frequent abdominopelvic CT surveillance imaging is required compared with patients who are treated with pcRPLND. Concerns exist about an increased risk of second malignancy for patients who undergo frequent CT imaging, such as those with clinical stage I NSGCT managed with active surveillance versus primary RPLND.[29] Thus, patients must be counseled about the risk of surveillance imaging versus overtreatment with pcRPLND for fibrosis alone, similar to discussions that occur in the stage 1 setting.[30]

The current findings have a number of important limitations. First, this retrospective, single-institution analysis used a selected patient sample that was validated with internal bootstrapping without an external validation cohort. Second, the analysis was restricted to patients with postchemotherapy residual retroperitoneal nodal masses. Whether these findings can be translated to residual masses at other anatomic sites, such as liver or lung, where surrounding normal parenchymal changes induced by chemotherapy may be increased and thus may limit radiomics prediction algorithms is unclear. Third, radiomics is a technically challenging and time-consuming approach that is unlikely to be clinically deliverable at places outside larger tertiary centers without improvements in automated contouring of ROIs. Fourth, detection of microscopic residual viable GCT in an otherwise fibrotic or necrotic large lymph node mass may be impossible to detect by a radiomics approach because of the limited resolution of a CT scan. Finally, there was no central pathology review, although all patient cases were reported in the same department by expert genitourinary pathologists and quality assurance procedures.

In summary, we developed a predictive radiomics algorithm that had an overall discriminative accuracy of 72% that improved to 88% when combined with clinical predictors. Additional independent validation is required to assess whether radiomics, in conjunction with standard clinical predictors, can identify patients with a high predicted likelihood of fibrosis to avoid pcRPLND.