Preliminary Study On The Predictive Value Of Multi-Parameter Magnetic Resonance Imaging Texture Analysis In Skull Base Recurrence Of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Objective:To evaluate the predictive value of multi-parameter magnetic resonance imaging texture analysis in skull base recurrence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma?NPC?.Materials and methods:60 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma?stage?-?a?with skull base involvement were divided into recurrence group?n=30?and control group?n=30?according to the recurrence of skull base.All patients underwent staging scan of nasopharyngeal carcinoma with 3.0 T magnetic resonance imaging?MRI?.All images of axial T1WI-TSE,axial T2WI-STIR and contrasted enhanced axial T1WI-SPIR sequence before and after treatment?3-6 months after treatment?were imported into Philips Radiomics Tool software for ROI contouring.Eight texture features?Entropy,Difference Entropy,Sum Entropy,Energy,Contrast,Inverse Difference Moment,Correlation,Auto-Correlation?in Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix?GLCM?were extracted for statistical analysis.Independent sample t test or Whitney U test was used to evaluate the statistical difference between the two groups of texture features,and the ROC curve was drawn to calculate the area under the curve?AUC?.And The reliability of the parameters was evaluated by the receiver operating characteristic?ROC?curve.There was a significant difference between the two-sided test P<0.05Results:In pre-treatment,the texture feature Correlation(COR¹_T2)of T2WI-STIR in recurrence group was significantly higher than that in non-recurrence group?P=0.007?.In the enhanced T1WI-SPIR,The Contrast(CON¹_T1+C)and Difference Entropy(DENT ¹_T1+C)of recurrence group were significantly higher than those in the non-recurrence group?P=0.026,P=0.046?.In post-treatment,the Entropy(ENT ²_T1+C)and Difference Entropy(DENT ²_T1+C)of the enhanced T1WI-SPIR in the recurrence group were significantly higher than those in the non-recurrence group?P=0.037,P=0.028?.The difference between pre-treatment and post-treatment,The Entropy(ENT_?T1+C),Difference Entropy(DENT_?T1+C)and Contrast(CON_?T1+C)of the enhanced T1WI-SPIR in recurrence group were higher than those in the non-recurrence group?P=0.017,P=0.003,P=0.011?.The Energy?ENE_?T1+C?and Inverse Difference Moment(IDM_?T1+C)in recurrence group were significantly lower than those in non-recurrence group?P=0.032,P=0.032?.The results of comprehensive analysis of ROC curves show that the characteristic parameters with high predictive value are:COR_T2¹?DENT_?T1+C?CON_?T1+C.Using COR¹_T2?0.308 as the threshold for predicting skull base recurrence,the sensitivity and specificity were 76.7%and 60%,respectively.Using DENT_?T1+C?-0.291 as the threshold for predicting skull base recurrence,the sensitivity and specificity were 66.7%and 80%,respectively.Using CON_?T1+C?-49.145 as the threshold for predicting skull base recurrence,the sensitivity and specificity were 73.3%and 63.3%,respectively.Conclusions:T2WI and contrasted enhanced T1WI sequence texture analysis have certain predictive value for skull base recurrence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.The difference of enhanced T1WI texture features between pretreatment and post-treatment is of high value in predicting skull base recurrence.