Intra and peritumoral PET radiomics analysis to predict the pathological response in breast cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to evaluate the contribution of 18Fluorine-Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography (18F-FDG PET) radiomic data obtained from both the tumoral and peritumoral area in predicting pathological complete response (pCR) in patients with locally advanced breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC).

METHODS: Female patients with a diagnosis of invasive ductal carcinoma who received NAC were evaluated retrospectively. The volume of interest (VOI) of the primary tumor (VOI-T ) was manually segmented, then a voxel-thick VOI was added around VOI-T to define the peritumoral area (VOI-PT ). Morphological, intensity-based, histogram and texture parameters were obtained from VOIs. The patients were divided into two groups as pCR and non-complete pathological response (npCR). A "radiomic model" was created with only radiomic features, and a "patho-radiomic model" was created using radiomic features and immunohistochemical data.

RESULTS: Of the 66 patients included in the study, 21 were in the pCR group. The only statistically significant feature from the primary tumor among patients with pCR and npCR was Morphological_Compacity-T (AUC: 0.666). Between response groups, a significant difference was detected in 2 morphological, 1 intensity, 4 texture features from VOI-PT ; no correlation was found between Morphological_Compacity-PT and NGTDM_contrast-PT . The obtained radiomic model's sensitivity and accuracy values were calculated as 61.9% and 75.8%, respectively (AUC: 0.786). When HER2 status was added, sensitivity and accuracy values of the patho-radiomic model increased to 85.7% and 81.8%, respectively (AUC: 0.903).

CONCLUSIONS: Evaluation of PET peritumoral radiomic features together with the primary tumor, rather than just the primary tumor, provides a better prediction of the pCR to NAC in patients with breast cancer.