Detection of epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations on CT images of patients with lung adenocarcinoma using radiomics and/or multi-level residual convolutionary neural networks.

BACKGROUND: We aim to analyze the ability to detect epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations on chest CT images of patients with lung adenocarcinoma using radiomics and/or multi-level residual convolutionary neural networks (MCNNs).
METHODS: We retrospectively collected 1,010 consecutive patients in Shanghai Chest Hospital from 2013 to 2017, among which 510 patients were EGFR-mutated and 500 patients were wild-type. The patients were randomly divided into a training set (810 patients) and a validation set (200 patients) according to a balanced distribution of clinical features. The CT images and the corresponding EGFR status measured by Amplification Refractory Mutation System (ARMS) method of the patients in the training set were utilized to construct both a radiomics-based model (MRadiomics) and MCNNs-based model (MMCNNs). The MRadiomics and MMCNNs were combined to build the ModelRadiomics+MCNNs (MRadiomics+MCNNs). Clinical data of gender and smoking history constructed the clinical features-based model (MClinical). MClinical was then added into MRadiomics, MMCNNs, and MRadiomics+MCNNs to establish the ModelRadiomics+Clinical (MRadiomics+Clinical), the ModelMCNNs+Clinical (MMCNNs+Clinical) and the ModelRadiomics+MCNNs+Clinical (MRadiomics+MCNNs+Clinical). All the seven models were tested in the validation set to ascertain whether they were competent to detect EGFR mutations. The detection efficiency of each model was also compared in terms of area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity and specificity.
RESULTS: The AUC of the MRadiomics, MMCNNs and MRadiomics+MCNNs to predict EGFR mutations was 0.740, 0.810 and 0.811 respectively. The performance of MMCNNs was better than that of MRadiomics (P=0.0225). The addition of clinical features did not improve the AUC of the MRadiomics (P=0.623), the MMCNNs (P=0.114) and the MRadiomics+MCNNs (P=0.058). The MRadiomics+MCNNs+Clinical demonstrated the highest AUC value of 0.834. The MMCNNs did not demonstrate any inferiority when compared with the MRadiomics+MCNNs (P=0.742) and the MRadiomics+MCNNs+Clinical (P=0.056).
CONCLUSIONS: Both of the MRadiomics and the MCNNs could predict EGFR mutations on CT images of patients with lung adenocarcinoma. The MMCNNs outperformed the MRadiomics in the detection of EGFR mutations. The combination of these two models, even added with clinical features, is not significantly more efficient than MMCNNs alone.