Radiomic and Artificial Intelligence Analysis with Textural Metrics Extracted by Contrast-Enhanced Mammography and Dynamic Contrast Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Detect Breast Malignant Lesions.

Purpose:The purpose of this study was to discriminate between benign and malignant breast lesions through several classifiers using, as predictors, radiomic metrics extracted from CEM and DCE-MRI images. In order to optimize the analysis, balancing and feature selection procedures were performed. Methods: Fifty-four patients with 79 histo-pathologically proven breast lesions (48 malignant lesions and 31 benign lesions) underwent both CEM and DCE-MRI. The lesions were retrospectively analyzed with radiomic and artificial intelligence approaches. Forty-eight textural metrics were extracted, and univariate and multivariate analyses were performed: non-parametric statistical test, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and machine learning classifiers. Results: Considering the single metrics extracted from CEM, the best predictors were KURTOSIS (area under ROC curve (AUC) = 0.71) and SKEWNESS (AUC = 0.71) calculated on late MLO view. Considering the features calculated from DCE-MRI, the best predictors were RANGE (AUC = 0.72), ENERGY (AUC = 0.72), ENTROPY (AUC = 0.70) and GLN (gray-level nonuniformity) of the gray-level run-length matrix (AUC = 0.72). Considering the analysis with classifiers and an unbalanced dataset, no significant results were obtained. After the balancing and feature selection procedures, higher values of accuracy, specificity and AUC were reached. The best performance was obtained considering 18 robust features among all metrics derived from CEM and DCE-MRI, using a linear discriminant analysis (accuracy of 0.84 and AUC = 0.88). Conclusions: Classifiers, adjusted with adaptive synthetic sampling and feature selection, allowed for increased diagnostic performance of CEM and DCE-MRI in the differentiation between benign and malignant lesions.

Radiomics and Artificial Intelligence Analysis with Textural Metrics Extracted by Contrast-Enhanced Mammography in the Breast Lesions Classification.

The aim of the study was to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of textural features extracted by dual-energy contrast-enhanced mammography (CEM) images, by carrying out univariate and multivariate statistical analyses including artificial intelligence approaches. In total, 80 patients with known breast lesion were enrolled in this prospective study according to regulations issued by the local Institutional Review Board. All patients underwent dual-energy CEM examination in both craniocaudally (CC) and double acquisition of mediolateral oblique (MLO) projections (early and late). The reference standard was pathology from a surgical specimen for malignant lesions and pathology from a surgical specimen or fine needle aspiration cytology, core or Tru-Cut needle biopsy, and vacuum assisted breast biopsy for benign lesions. In total, 104 samples of 80 patients were analyzed. Furthermore, 48 textural parameters were extracted by manually segmenting regions of interest. Univariate and multivariate approaches were performed: non-parametric Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test; receiver operating characteristic (ROC), linear classifier (LDA), decision tree (DT), k-nearest neighbors (KNN), artificial neural network (NNET), and support vector machine (SVM) were utilized. A balancing approach and feature selection methods were used. The univariate analysis showed low accuracy and area under the curve (AUC) for all considered features. Instead, in the multivariate textural analysis, the best performance considering the CC view (accuracy (ACC) = 0.75; AUC = 0.82) was reached with a DT trained with leave-one-out cross-variation (LOOCV) and balanced data (with adaptive synthetic (ADASYN) function) and a subset of three robust textural features (MAD, VARIANCE, and LRLGE). The best performance (ACC = 0.77; AUC = 0.83) considering the early-MLO view was reached with a NNET trained with LOOCV and balanced data (with ADASYN function) and a subset of ten robust features (MEAN, MAD, RANGE, IQR, VARIANCE, CORRELATION, RLV, COARSNESS, BUSYNESS, and STRENGTH). The best performance (ACC = 0.73; AUC = 0.82) considering the late-MLO view was reached with a NNET trained with LOOCV and balanced data (with ADASYN function) and a subset of eleven robust features (MODE, MEDIAN, RANGE, RLN, LRLGE, RLV, LZLGE, GLV_GLSZM, ZSV, COARSNESS, and BUSYNESS). Multivariate analyses using pattern recognition approaches, considering 144 textural features extracted from all three mammographic projections (CC, early MLO, and late MLO), optimized by adaptive synthetic sampling and feature selection operations obtained the best results (ACC = 0.87; AUC = 0.90) and showed the best performance in the discrimination of benign and malignant lesions.