M. Bologna, V. D. A. Corino, L. T. Mainardi

Assessment of the effect of intensity standardization on the reliability of T1-weighted MRI radiomic features: experiment on a virtual phantom

Medical Imaging Analysis and Diagnostics

The effect of time of repetition (TR) and time of echo (TE) on radiomic features was evaluated using a virtual phantom. Forty-two T1-weighted MRI images of the same virtual phantom were simulated with TR and TE in a range used in clinical practice. Fifty-eight radiomic features were considered for this analysis. Features were extracted from 3 different regions of interest (ROIs) from the original images and from images that underwent intensity standardization (linear intensity standardization, Z-score standardization and histogram matching). Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to assess the reliability of the radiomic features and a threshold of 0.75 was used to discriminate features with good or bad reliability. The coefficient of determination R 2 was used to quantify correlation between features and image acquisition parameters. The majority of radiomic features (76%) had good reliability (ICC>0.75) and 66% of the features were uncorrelated with TR and TE (R 2 <; 0.5). Intensity standardization (in particular histogram matching) significantly reduced the correlation. Intensity standardization also increased the reliability of FOS features, but histogram matching significantly reduced the reliability of GLCM features.

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