Diagnostic Value of Magnetic Resonance Elastography Radiomics Analysis for the Assessment of Hepatic Fibrosis in Patients With Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Abstract

Background: To investigate the diagnostic performance of radiomics analysis using magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) toward assessing hepatic fibrosis in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Methods: A total of 100 patients with suspected NAFLD were retrospectively enrolled. All patients underwent a liver parenchymal biopsy. MRE was performed using a 3.0-T scanner. Following three-dimensional (3D) segmentation of MRE images, 834 radiomic features were analyzed using a commercial program. Radiologic features, such as median and mean values of two-dimensional (2D) or 3D regions of interest (ROIs) and variable clinical features, were analyzed. A random forest regressor was employed to extract important radiomic, radiological, and clinical features. A random forest classifier model was trained to use these features to classify the fibrosis stage. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was evaluated using a classifier for fibrosis stage diagnosis. Results: The pathological hepatic fibrosis stage was classified as low-grade fibrosis (stages F0–F1, n = 82) or clinically significant fibrosis (stages F2–F4, n = 18). Eight important features were extracted from radiomics analysis, with the two most important being wavelet-HHL gray level dependence matrix (GLDM)-dependence non-uniformity-normalized and wavelet-HHL GLDM-dependence entropy. The median value of the 2D ROI was identified as the most important radiologic feature. Platelet count was identified as an important clinical feature. The AUC of the classifier using radiomics was comparable to that of radiologic measures (0.97 ± 0.07 vs. 0.96 ± 0.06). Conclusions: MRE radiomics analysis provides diagnostic performance comparable to conventional MRE analysis for the assessment of clinically significant hepatic fibrosis in patients with NAFLD.