Radiomics - Quantitative Biomarker Analysis for Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Prediction: A Review

Abstract

Background: Cancer of the breast has become a global problem for women's health. Though concerns regarding early detection and accurate diagnosis were raised, an effort is required for precision medicine as well as personalized treatment. In the past years, the area of medicinal imaging has seen an unprecedented growth that leads to an advancement of radiomics, which provides countless quantitative biomarkers extracted from modern diagnostic images, including a detailed tumor characterization of breast malignancy. Discussion: In this research, we presented the methodology and implementation of radiomics, together with its future trends and challenges by the basis of published papers. Radiomics could distinguish between malignant from benign tumors, predict prognostic factors, molecular subtypes of breast carcinoma, treatment response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC), and recurrence survival. The incorporation of quantitative knowledge with clinical, histopathological and genomic information will enable physicians to afford customized care of treatment for patients with breast cancer. Conclusion: Our research was intended to help physicians and radiologists learn fundamental knowledge about radiomics and also to work collaboratively with researchers to explore evidence for further usage in clinical practice.

Ultrasound-based radiomics model for predicting molecular biomarkers in breast cancer

“…However, it requires biopsy or surgery which is invasive, time-consuming, and sometimes prone to inaccurate due to the heterogeneity. In recent studies, radiomics shows good performance for predicting molecular subtypes of BC ( 14 ). In our study, we extracted ultrasound radiomics features to build the prediction models for the expression of ER, PR, HER2, and Ki-67 in BC.…”

Intra- and peri-tumoral radiomics for predicting the sentinel lymph node metastasis in breast cancer based on preoperative mammography and MRI

“…The radiomics has been increasingly utilized to capture valuable markers in BC for the diagnosis, prediction of gene expression and prognosis ( 11 ), because the tumor characteristics can be comprehensively assessed from the whole tumor region in the medical image ( 12 ), rather than from limited biopsy tissue samples. Many radiomics studies have been conducted on the diagnosis, therapeutic response prediction and prognosis in BC ( 13 ). Previous reports also revealed associations between the lymph node status and MRI-based radiomics features ( 2 , 14 ), but both focused on the intratumoral tumor region, without considering information from peritumoral regions.…”

Radiomic Signatures Based on Mammography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging as New Markers for Estimation of Ki-67 and HER-2 Status in Breast Cancer

“…15,16 In the past few years, radiomic approaches have been used for the diagnosis of BC [17][18][19] and prediction of lymph node metastasis in early-stage BC, 20 which suggests the clinical value and reliability of radiomics for the assessment of BC. 21,22 Recent attempts have been made to reveal associations between radiomics features and Ki-67 or HER-2 status based on breast dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI, [23][24][25][26][27] diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) MRI, [28][29][30] and DBT. [31][32][33] On the other hand, previous studies have been based on intratumoral regions, excluding peritumoral areas, which has inherent limitations because areas surrounding the breast tumor have been demonstrated to contain great information associated with breast tumor characteristics.…”

“…Radiomics has recently drawn increasing attention because of the capabilities of high-throughput analysis of quantitative features from medical images and has been applied in precision diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment prediction 15,16 . In the past few years, radiomic approaches have been used for the diagnosis of BC 17–19 and prediction of lymph node metastasis in early-stage BC, 20 which suggests the clinical value and reliability of radiomics for the assessment of BC 21,22 . Recent attempts have been made to reveal associations between radiomics features and Ki-67 or HER-2 status based on breast dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI, 23–27 diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) MRI, 28–30 and DBT 31–33 .…”