Radiomics Analysis of Susceptibility Weighted Imaging for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Exploring the Correlation between Histopathology and Radiomics Features

Purpose: No previous researches have extracted radiomics features from susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) for biomedical applications. This research aimed to explore the correlation between histopathology of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and radiomics features extracted from SWI. Methods: A total of 53 patients were ultimately enrolled into this retrospective study with MR examinations undertaken at a 3T scanner. About 107 radiomics features were extracted from SWI images of each patient. Then, the Spearman correlation test was performed to evaluate the correlation between the SWI-derived radiomics features and histopathologic indexes including histopathologic grade, microvascular invasion (MVI) as well as the expression status of cytokeratin 7 (CK-7), cytokeratin 19 (CK-19) and Glypican-3 (GPC-3). With SWI-derived radiomics features utilized as independent variables, four logistic regression-based diagnostic models were established for diagnosing patients with positive CK-7, CK-19, GPC-3 and high histopathologic grade, respectively. Then, receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic performance. Results: A total of 11, 32, 18 and one SWI-derived radiomics features were significantly correlated with histopathologic grade, the expression of CK-7, the expression of CK-19 and the expression of GPC-3 (P < 0.05), respectively. None of the SWI-derived radiomics features was correlated with MVI status. The areas under the curve were 0.905, 0.837, 0.800 and 0.760 for diagnosing patients with positive CK-19, positive CK-7, high histopathologic grade and positive GPC-3. Conclusion: Extracting the radiomics features from SWI images was feasible to evaluate multiple histopathologic indexes of HCC.