The application of radiomics in cancer imaging with a focus on lung cancer, renal cell carcinoma, gastrointestinal cancer, and head and neck cancer: A systematic review.

Abstract

Purpose: To study the application of radiomics in cancer imaging with a focus on lung cancer, renal cell carcinoma, gastrointestinal cancer, and head and neck cancer.

Methods: Different electronic databases were considered. Articles published in the last five years were analyzed (January 2019 and December 2023). Papers were selected by two investigators with over 15 years of experience in Radiomics analysis in cancer imaging. The methodological quality of each radiomics study was performed using the Radiomic Quality Score (RQS) by two different readers in consensus and then by a third operator to solve disagreements between the two readers.

Results: 19 articles are included in the review. Among the analyzed studies, only one study achieved an RQS of 18 reporting multivariable analyzes with also non-radiomics features and using the validation phase considering two datasets from two distinct institutes and open science and data domain.

Conclusion: This informative review has brought attention to the increasingly consolidated potential of Radiomics, although there are still several aspects to be evaluated before the transition to routine clinical practice. There are several challenges to address, including the need for standardization at all stages of the workflow and the potential for cross-site validation using heterogeneous real-world datasets. It will be necessary to establish and promote an imaging data acquisition protocol, conduct multicenter prospective quality control studies, add scanner differences and vendor-dependent characteristics; to collect images of individuals at additional time points, to report calibration statistics.