Intra-scan inter-tissue variability can help harmonize radiomics features in CT

We studied the repeatability and the relative intra-scan variability across acquisition protocols in CT using phantom and unenhanced abdominal series.

We used 17 CT scans from the Credence Cartridge Radiomics Phantom database and 20 unenhanced multi-site non-pathologic abdominal patient series for which we measured spleen and liver tissues. We performed multiple measurements in extracting 9 radiomics features. We defined a “tandem” as the measurement of a given tissue (or material) by a given radiomics. For each tandem, we assessed the proportion of the variability attributable to repetitions, acquisition protocols, material, or patient. We analyzed the distribution of the intra-scan correlation between pairs of tandems and checked the impact of correlation coefficient greater than 0.90 in comparing paired and unpaired differences.

The repeatability of radiomics features depends on the measured material; 56% of tandems were highly repeatable. Histogram-derived radiomics were generally less repeatable. Nearly 60% of relative radiomics measurements had a correlation coefficient higher than 0.90 allowing paired measurements to improve reliability in detecting the difference between two materials. The analysis of liver and spleen tissues showed that measurement variability was negligible with respect to other variabilities. As for phantom data, we found that gray level zone length matrix (GLZLM)–derived radiomics and gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM)–derived radiomics were the most correlating features. For these features, relative intra-scan measurements improved the detection of different materials or tissues.

We identified radiomics features for which the intra-scan measurements between tissues are linearly correlated. This property represents an opportunity to improve tissue characterization and inter-site harmonization.