A CT-based radiomics nomogram for the preoperative prediction of perineural invasion in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-4161245/v1

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A CT-based radiomics nomogram for the preoperative prediction of perineural invasion in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4161245/v1

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Background

Preoperative evaluation perineural invasion (PNI) affects the treatment and prognosis of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). This study aims to develop a nomogram based on a CT radiomics nomogram for the preoperative prediction of PNI in PDAC patients.

Methods

A total of 217 patients with histologically confirmed PDAC were enrolled in this retrospective study. Radiomics features were extracted from the whole tumor. Univariate analysis and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator logistic regression were applied for feature selection and radiomics model construction. Finally, a nomogram combining the radiomics score (Rad-score) and clinical characteristics was established. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, calibration curve analysis and decision curve analysis (DCA) were used to evaluate the predictive performance of the radiomics nomogram.

Results

According to multivariate analysis, CT features, including the evaluation of radiologists regarding PNI status based on CECT (CTPNI) (OR = 0.315 [95% CI: 0.131, 0.761], P = 0.01), the lymph node status determined on CECT (CTLN) (OR = 0.169 [95% CI: 0.059, 0.479], P = 0.001) and the Rad-score (OR = 3.666 [95% CI: 2.069, 6.494], P < 0.001), were significantly associated with PNI. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for the nomogram combined with the Rad-score, CTLN and CTPNI achieved favorable discrimination of PNI status, with AUCs of 0.846 and 0.778 in the training and testing cohorts, respectively, which were superior to those of the Rad-score (AUC of 0.720 in the training cohort and 0.640 in the testing cohort) and CTPNI (AUC of 0.610 in the training cohort and 0.675 in the testing cohort). The calibration plot and decision curve showed good results.

Conclusion

The CT-based radiomics nomogram has the potential to accurately predict PNI in patients with PDAC.

pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

perineural invasion

computed tomography

radiomics

nomogram

1. Preoperative evaluation perineural invasion (PNI) affects the treatment and prognosis of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).

2. This retrospective study established a nomogram based on morphological features, and the quantitative radiomics score from contrast-enhanced CT has the potential to preoperatively predict PNI status in PDAC patients.

3. The performance of the nomogram was better than that of radiomics score or radiologists in evaluating PNI status.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related death, and its prevalence has slowly increased among men, from 12.1 per 100000 in 2000 to 12.7 per 100000 in 2020, while its prevalence has remained stable in women at 9.3–9.6 per 100000[1]. Radical resection is the only effective means for treatment, but fewer than 20% of patients are able to undergo surgery at the time of diagnosis, and early recurrence and metastasis frequently occur after radical resection[2].

PDAC is characterized by perineural growth, and its incidence is 43.2%-100%[3]. Perineural invasion (PNI) is related to the dissemination and metastasis of PDAC and is an independent risk factor for patient prognosis[4–6]. A previous study showed that patients who received neoadjuvant therapy had a significantly lower PNI than did those who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy[7]. Felsenstein et al. demonstrated that adjuvant chemotherapy improved the prognosis in patients with PNI-positive PDAC but not in those with PNI-negative disease[8]. In addition, the PNI status affects whether the Heidelberg procedure is performed[9]. The assessment of PNI currently relies on histopathology following surgery; however, preoperative knowledge of PNI status holds clinical significance because it has the potential to aid clinicians in identifying high-risk categories beforehand, formulating personalized treatment plans, and ultimately improving patient outcomes.

Contrast-enhanced CT (CECT) is the first-line imaging method for the diagnosis, staging and evaluation of the therapeutic effect of PDAC[10, 11]. Previous studies[12–14] have evaluated PNI of PDAC via qualitative methods and established criteria for CECT; however, these studies relied on radiologists’ experience and had low accuracy. Guo et al.[15] established a quantitative method based on the minimum distance between the tumor boundary and adjacent arteries, but the tumor boundary is difficult to define and may affect the measurement results.

Radiomics can noninvasively and rapidly obtain diagnostic, prognostic and treatment information from medical images to support clinical decision-making. This information can be used as a complementary tool to verify clinical and imaging results[16–18]. Radiomics has been applied to evaluate lymph node (LN) metastasis and assess the prognosis of PDAC patients[19–21]. Several CT/MRI-based radiomics models for predicting PNI have been introduced for rectal cancer and gastric cancer patients, and they have achieved satisfactory results[22, 23]. However, no study has evaluated PNI preoperatively in patients with PDAC based on CT radiomics.

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a nomogram based on CT radiomics features and clinical characteristics for the preoperative prediction of PNI in PDAC patients.

This retrospective study was approved by the institutional review board at West China Hospital, Sichuan, China (IRB number: 2023-0003), and the requirement for written informed consent was waived. It performed in accordance with Declaration of Helsinki.

Patients

A total of 335 patients with PDAC who underwent CT at our hospital between September 2021 and February 2023 were enrolled in this retrospective study. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) underwent radical resection, and preoperative CECT images were available at our institution, (2) primary PDAC and definite PNI were confirmed by histopathology, and (3) complete clinicopathological information was available. The exclusion criteria were as follows: (1) lesions that were too small (less than 1 cm) or of poor image quality that did not meet diagnostic criteria, (2) preoperative neoadjuvant therapy such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy, (3) more than 30 days between the preoperative CT scan and surgery, or (4) other retroperitoneal tumors. Finally, 217 patients with PDAC were enrolled (99 PNI-negative patients and 118 PNI-positive patients), and the patients were randomly divided into a training cohort (n = 151) and a validation cohort (n = 66) at a ratio of 7:3 (Fig. 1).

Demographic information, including age and sex, was collected. The carbohydrate antigen 19 − 9 (CA19-9) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels before surgery were recorded.

Pathological PNI diagnosis

PNI is defined as a tumor located near a nerve, with tumor cells located in at least 33% of the nerve perimeter or in any of the three layers of the nerve sheath[24].

CT image acquisition

The abdominal CT scanning parameters and contrast agents used are described in detail in supplementary A1.

CT image analysis

Two radiologists with six and eight years of experience in abdominal imaging who were blinded to the pathologic details reviewed the CT images and evaluated the following features: CTPNI, CTLN, location and size of the tumor, and dilatation of the common bile duct and the main pancreatic duct. Discrepancies between observers were resolved by consensus, and further analysis was performed using consensus interpretation. Interagreement between the two reviewers was evaluated by calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for continuous variables and Cohen’s kappa value for categorical variables.

CTPNI was defined as the disappearance of the peripancreatic fat sPDACe or peripancreatic vascular sPDACe (including the common hepatic artery, superior mesenteric artery, superior mesenteric vein, celiac artery and splenic vessels) or the appearance of ribbon-like, reticular soft tissue density shadows or irregular mass shadows[25].

If any of the following conditions were met, the CTLN was evaluated as positive: the short diameter of the LN was more than 10 mm, the density was uneven, the enhancement was uneven, internal necrosis occurred, the LN was fused, the boundary of the LN was unclear, or the LN invaded adjacent organs or blood vessels[26].

The location and size of the tumor were recorded based on preoperative CT. The location of the tumor was defined as the head on the right side, the neck in front, or the body or tail on the left side according to the confluence of the portal vein and the superior mesenteric vein. The size of the tumor was measured at the axial level according to the largest cross section of the lesion. Tumor size was calculated as the mean of two measurements for further analysis.

A common bile duct (CBD) diameter greater than 10 mm and a main pancreatic duct (MPD) diameter greater than 2 mm were defined as dilated.

Tumor segmentation

Two experienced radiologists in abdominal imaging (with six and eight years of experience from Reader 1 and Reader 2, respectively) manually and independently and blindly sketched the lesion slice by slice along the edge to the results from 30 randomly selected patients based on the arterial and portal venous images of CECT, avoiding the CBD and vessels. Reader 1 sketched the lesion twice, with an interval of more than 1 week, for calculating intra-agreement. Reader 1 and Reader 2 blindly and independently delineated the lesion to measure the interagreement. Then, the sketch of all patients was completed by reader 1. This process was implemented on the open source software IBEX (β1.0, http://bit.ly/IBEX MDAnderson), which runs on MATLAB 2013a. Due to the variability problems caused by voxel size and gray level dependence, it is unrealistic that all radiomics features achieve satisfactory agreement. The ICC was used to assess intraobserver and interobserver agreement. An ICC greater than 0.75 was considered to indicate good consistency.

Radiomics extraction and selection

The gray level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM), gray level runlength matrix (GLRLM), intensity histogram (IH), intensity direct (ID) and shape feature groups were extracted from IBEX. A total of 808 radiomics features were extracted from arterial and portal venous CECT images. Resampling was applied for preprocessing to eliminate images with different scanning parameters and slice thicknesses[27]. The Z score was used to eliminate the effect of the data dimension. The radiomics workflow is shown in Fig. 2.

Two steps were adopted for reducing the dimensions and identifying robust radiomics features in the training cohort. Univariate analysis with an independent samples t test or the Mann‒Whitney U test was first applied to select potentially important features. Subsequently, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) method was applied using tenfold cross-validation for feature selection. Lambda was selected according to the 1-standard error of the minimum criterion (1-SE criterion, a simpler model). The selected optimal radiomics features were weighted by their respective coefficients and a linear combination to obtain the corresponding radiomics score (Rad-score) in the training and testing cohorts.

Nomogram construction

The significantly different features were used to construct a nomogram for both the training and testing cohorts. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were calculated to assess the performance of the nomogram model. A calibration curve was used to evaluate the agreement between the predicted probability of PNI and the actual probability of PNI. The clinical utility of the model was evaluated by a decisive curve.

Statistical analysis

Statistical analyses of clinical characteristics were conducted with SPSS (statistics 26). The remaining statistical analyses were implemented in R (version 4.3.1, https://www.r-project.org/). A significant difference was considered at P < 0.05. Categorical variables were analyzed using the chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test. Continuous variables were analyzed by the independent samples t test or the Mann‒Whitney U test, depending on the type of data distribution. Differences in clinical information and CT characteristics between patients with and without PNI were compared using univariate analysis, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify independent predictors that were significantly associated with PNI.

The “glmnet” PDACkage was used for LASSO regression analysis. The “rms” PDACkage was applied for nomogram construction and calibration curve plotting. The “pROC” PDACkage and “dca. R” were used for the ROC curve and decision curve plot, respectively.

Clinical characteristics

Table 1 shows the clinical data for patients in the training cohort and testing cohort. The LN status and tumor histopathological grade were significantly different between the two groups in the training cohort (P < 0.05), while there was no significant difference in the testing cohort (P > 0.05). The CTLN and CTPNI were significantly different in both the training and testing cohorts (P < 0.05).

Table 1

The patients’ characteristics in the training and testing cohort.
Characteristics	Training cohort		P value	Testing cohort		P value
Characteristics	PNI (+) (n = 82)	PNI (-) (n = 69)		PNI (+) (n = 36)	PNI (-) (n = 30)
Age (y)	60.1 ± 11.0	60.4 ± 9.2	0.451	59.3 ± 11.3	57.9 ± 10.1	0.578
Sex			0.225			0.451
Male	48	47		22	21
Female	34	22		14	9
Interval between CT and surgery (d)	5 (3,8)	6 (3, 9)	0.401	4 (2,7)	4 (2, 6)	0.869
Location			0.903			0.794
Head	53	47		30	24
Neck	4	3		3	2
Body or tail	25	19		3	4
Vascular			0.652			0.288
Negative	54	43		26	25
Positive	28	26		10	5
Margin			0.641			0.114
Negative	73	63		30	29
Positive	9	6		6	1
MPD			0.229			0.203
Negative	21	23		7	10
Positive	61	46		29	20
CBD			0.284			0.575
Negative	38	26		12	12
Positive	44	43		24	18
CTLN			0.000*			0.034*
Negative	47	61		21	25
Positive	35	8		15	5
CTPNI			0.006*			0.004*
Negative	45	53		21	28
Positive	37	16		15	2
Size	2.50 (1.90, 4.05)	2.24 (1.84, 3.09)	0.155	2.55 (1.94, 3.19)	2.42 (2, 3)	0.981
CEA	3.60 (2.21, 5.57)	3.32 (2.27, 5.51)	0.977	3.12 (2.21, 7.4)	3.02 (1.72, 6.2)	0.747
CA19-9	270 (65.89, 795.5)	195. 45 (26.23, 577. 63)	0.375	308.25 (75.0, 699.55)	196.25 (61.15, 387.95)	0.245
LN			0.037*			0.389
Negative	42	47		19	19
Positive	40	22		17	11
Grade			0.049*			0.413
Well-differentiated	1	3		1	2
Moderately differentiated	53	54		23	22
Poorly differentiated	28	12		12	6
Rad-score	0.52 (-0.06, 0.99)	-0.13 (-0.85, -0.5)	0.000*	0.46 (-0.14, 0.95)	-0.08 (-0.58, 0.6)	0.01*
* represents a statistically significant difference.
CTPNI: Radiologists evaluated the status of PNI based on CECT; CTLN: The lymph node status determined on CT; CA19-9: Carbohydrate antigen 19 − 9; CEA: Carcinoembryonic antigen; CBD: Common bile duct; LN: Lymph node; MPD: Main pancreatic duct; PNI: Perineural invasion; Rad-score: Radiomics score.

There was no significant difference between the training and validation cohorts in terms of the percentage of PNI-positive patients. There was no significant difference between the PNI-positive and PNI-negative groups in age, sex, CEA, CA19-9, tumor size or location, CBD or MPD dilation status, or vascular invasion or margin status in either the training or testing cohort. The ICC of the tumor size was 0.936, indicating good consistency. The kappa values of the CTPNI and CTLN were 0.723 and 0.741, respectively, with moderate consistency.

According to the univariate analysis of the training cohort, the CTPNI, CTLN, LN and tumor grade were significantly associated with PNI (Table 2). According to multivariate analysis, CT features, including the CTPNI (OR = 0.315 [95% CI: 0.131, 0.761], P = 0.01) and CTLN (OR = 0.169 [95% CI: 0.059, 0.479], P = 0.001), were significantly associated with PNI.

Table 2

Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis for PNI of PDAC.
Characteristics	Univariate Analysis		Multivariate Analysis
	Odds Ratio (95% CI)	P value	Odds Ratio (95% CI)	P value
CTPNI
Present	1		1
Absent	0.367 (0.181, 0.746)	0.006	0.315 (0.131, 0.761)	0.01
CTLN
Positive	1		1
Negative	0.176 (0.075, 0.415)	< 0.000	0.169 (0.059, 0.479)	0.001
LN
Positive	1		1
Negative	0.491 (0.252, 0.957)	0.037	0.456 (0.196, 1.065)	0.07
Grade
Poorly differentiated	1		1
Moderately differentiated	0.143 (0.013, 1.516)	0.106	0.435 (0.034, 5.52)	0.521
Well-differentiated	0.421 (0.194, 0.913)	0.029	0.434 (0.169, 1.115)	0.083
Rad-score	2.718 (1.172, 4.316)	< 0.001	3.666 (2.069, 6.494)	< 0.001
CI: Confidence interval; CTPNI: Radiologists evaluated the status of PNI based on CECT; CTLN: The lymph node status determined on CT; LN: Lymph node; Rad-score: Radiomics score.

Radiomics feature selection and model construction

The mean ICCs for intraobserver agreement and interobserver agreement were 0.889 (range from 0.103 to 0.995) and 0.843 (range from 0.002–0.993), respectively (Supplementary Fig. 1). Ninety radiomics features were excluded because of intraobserver agreement, and 141 radiomics features were excluded because of interobserver agreement. For features with suboptimal agreement, 68 intraobserver-excluded features were included among 141 interobserver-excluded features. Ultimately, 163 radiomics features were excluded due to inferior reproducibility, and the remaining 645 radiomics features were used for the next analysis.

After univariate analysis, 91 radiomics features were significantly different between the PNI-positive and PNI-negative groups in the training cohort. The LASSO regression method with 10-fold cross-validation was applied for the remaining features selected, and 8 optimized features were chosen for constructing the model. The selected radiomics features were quantitatively integrated into the Rad-score in the training and testing cohorts. According to the univariate and multivariate analyses, the Rad-score (OR = 3.666 [95% CI: 2.069, 6.494], P < 0.001) was significantly related to PNI.

Nomogram construction

The Rad-score was independently associated with PNI. The AUC for the Rad-score in the training cohort (0.720, 95% confidence interval [CI]: [0.639, 0.802]) was close to that in the testing cohort (0.640, 95% CI: 0.499, 0.781). The AUC of the CTPNI was 0.610 (95% CI: 0.536, 0.684) in the training cohort and 0.675 (95% CI: 0.582, 0.768) in the testing cohort. Using the Rad-score combined with the CTLN and CTPNI, a nomogram (Fig. 3) for predicting PNI was constructed, and it achieved favorable performance both in the training cohort, with an AUC of 0.846 (95% CI: 0.785, 0.907), and in the testing cohort, with an AUC of 0.778 (95% CI: 0.666, 0.889). Comparing the AUCs of the nomogram model with those of the Rad-score and CTPNI through the DeLong test, the nomogram model achieved the best performance (P < 0.05) (Fig. 4). The diagnostic performance of the nomogram model, Rad-score and CTPNI in both the training and testing cohorts is summarized in Table 3. The calibration plot indicated that the predicted PNI was consistent with the actual PNI probability (Fig. 5A). The decision curve suggested that the nomogram model outperformed CTPNI at any threshold probability (Fig. 5B). Figure 6 shows examples of the clinical application of the nomogram.

Table 3

The performance of the training and testing cohorts.
Model		Accuracy	Sensitivity	Specificity	AUC (95% CI)
Training cohort	CTPNI model	0.596	0.451	0.768	0.610 (0.536, 0.684)
	Radiomics model	0.636	0.720	0.536	0.720 (0.639, 0.802)
	nomogram	0.781	0.890	0.768	0.846 (0.785, 0.907)
Testing cohort	CTPNI model	0.652	0.417	0.882	0.675 (0.582, 0.768)
	Radiomics model	0.636	0.722	0.533	0.640 (0.499, 0.781)
	nomogram	0.667	0.806	0.733	0.778 (0.666, 0.889)
AUC: Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve; CI: Confidence interval; Rad-clinical: The combined of CTLN, CTPNI and radiomics model.

Preoperative accurate evaluation of PNI in patients with PDAC affects the choice of appropriate treatment. Our retrospective study constructed a nomogram to preoperatively predict PNI based on the rad-score from the arterial and portal venous phases of CECT, CTLN and CTPNI. The nomogram could effectively predict the occurrence of PNI in both the training and testing groups. This study demonstrated that the nomogram was superior to the Rad-score and CTPNI for evaluating the occurrence of PNI.

The prevalence of PNI in PDAC patients is fairly high, varying from 42.3%-100% in previous reports[3], with an incidence of 54.4% in this study. Additionally, we found an interesting association between PNI status and LN status, and the PNI-positive group was more prone to LN metastasis. Previous studies have indicated that cancer cells grow along nerves in contact with LNs, indicating a complex link between LN metastasis and PNI[28, 29]. There was also a statistically significant difference in the CTLNs. In addition, patients with PNI were more likely to have poor pathological differentiation. Poorly differentiated PDAC has more aggressive behavior, which is related to poor prognosis, PNI and poor differentiation and reflects the malignant biological behavior of PDAC. We did not find significant differences in tumor size; dilation status of the CBD or MPD; CEA or CA19-9 levels; or resection margin status between the PNI-positive and PNI-negative groups. The relationship between PNI and tumor size is controversial. Crippa et al. reported that the incidence of PNI increased with tumor size[30]. However, Patel et al. suggested that no evidence was found between tumor size and PNI[31]. PNI occurs early in PDAC, and even tumors less than 2 cm may develop PNI[32]. This may be related to the greater probability of PNI due to tumor growth beyond the pancreas, while tumors within the pancreas generally do not develop PNI even if the tumor is large, based on the anatomical structure[33]. These controversial results suggest that the relationship between tumor size and PNI needs further investigation. CBD and MPD dilatation caused by obstruction may not be associated with PNI. CEA and CA19-9 are nonspecific in PDAC and may be abnormal in a variety of diseases, which may account for the lack of differences in CEA and CA19-9 between the PNI-positive and PNI-negative groups.

Eight radiomics features related to PNI were selected for this study. Kulkarni et al.[34] extracted CT texture features to analyze their association with PNI and did not find any texture features related to PNI. The possible reason is that the texture features were only extracted from the maximum level of the tumor, which included incomplete features. In addition, in this study, poorly vascularized tumors located in the head of the pancreas were selected. In our study, the radiomics features of the whole lesion were extracted at the three-dimensional level, which could help to discover more biological characteristics of tumors. These selected features were integrated into a Rad-score and exhibited moderate performance in preoperatively predicting the PNI status of PDAC in both the training and testing cohorts. Radiomics can improve the prediction performance of medical images by improving analysis and using computer algorithms to extract thousands of quantitative features, and it can mine a large amount of information that is invisible to the naked eye. According to the radiologists’ evaluation, the CTPNI achieved inferior performance, which may be attributed to perivascular inflammation or fibrosis easily mimicking PNI on CT. In addition, PDAC is characterized by lymphatic growth and PNI, which are easily confused with microvessels, LN or fibrosis on CT. This may have caused the unsatisfactory agreement between the two reviewers in assessing the CTPNI and CTLN in our study.

A nomogram combining the Rad-score, CTLN and CTPNI achieved the best performance (the AUC in the testing cohort was 0.778) for the preoperative assessment of PNI in patients with PDAC. Several possible reasons may contribute to the good performance of the nomogram. One is that the Rad-score combined with arterial and portal venous phases can provide valuable information. In addition, different CT scan parameters may lead to unsatisfactory reproducibility of radiomics features, which can be maximally alleviated by using resampling as a preprocessing method, which optimizes gray dispersion to maintain the stability of features[35]. Z score standardization eliminates the effect of different data dimensions. Moreover, the good performance of the nomogram was attributed to feature selection and modeling. Univariate analysis and LASSO regression confirmed that important features were selected for modeling. Tenfold validation was applied to guarantee the robustness of the model. Finally, the nomogram integrates selected radiomics features, the presence of PDAC on CT images and the experience of radiologists and combines the performance of different dimensions to better reflect the characteristics of PDAC. This result suggested that the nomogram has the potential to preoperatively predict PNI status in PDAC patients. The calibration curve revealed that the predicted PNI was in good agreement with the actual PNI probability. The decision curve indicated that the nomogram outperformed radiologists at any threshold probability.

This study has several limitations. First, this was a single-center study with a limited sample size and no external validation group. However, the number included in our study was relatively larger than that in previous studies. Therefore, the retrospective nature of the study may have led to biased results. Large sample, multicenter and prospective studies should be conducted to further verify the results. Moreover, although several studies have reported that PNI is associated with PDAC patient prognosis, the relationship between PNI and prognosis was not clarified in this study. Subsequently, the corresponding patients should be followed up on the basis of this study to explore the ability of the nomogram to predict survival. Ultimately, there was not a consistent one-to-one match between CT evaluation and pathology.

In conclusion, a nomogram based on the rad-score derived from both the arterial and portal venous phases of CECT combined with the CTLN and CTPNI may serve as a valuable noninvasive tool for the preoperative assessment of PNI in patients with PDAC. This approach offers a practical means to classify PDAC patients before surgery and enhance patient management.

AUC

area under the receiver operating characteristic curve

CECT

contrast-enhanced computed tomography

CTPNI

radiologists evaluated the status of PNI based on CECT

CTLN

the lymph node status determined on CT

CA19-9

carbohydrate antigen 19 − 9

CEA

carcinoembryonic antigen

CBD

common bile duct

GLCM

gray-level cooccurrences matrix

GLRLM

gray-level run-length matrix

intensity histogram

intensity direct

ICC

intraclass correlation coefficient

LASSO

least absolute shrinkage and selection operator

lymph node

MPD

main pancreatic duct

PNI

perineural invasion

PDAC

pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Rad-score

radiomics score

ROC

received operating characteristic

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Author contribution

Y.D. collected the data and drafted the main manuscript, HP.Y. made the statistical analysis and part writing. Their contributions to this study are consistent, so they are listed as co- first authors. XP.D. collected and interpreted the data. L.L. collected the data. ZX.H. revised the manuscript and B.S. designed the manuscript. The contributions of ZX.H. and B.S. to this study are consistent, so they are listed as co-corresponding authors. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Funding

The authors state that this study was supported by the 1.3.5 project for disciplines of excellence, West China Hospital, Sichuan University (Grant number ZYGD22004, ZYJC21012); the development project of Hainan provincial clinical medical center and post-doctoral station development project of Sana (Grant number 23CZ009).

Data availability

The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ethical approval and consent to participate

Written informed consent was not required for this study because this is retrospective

study, this study was approved by the institutional ethics committee of West China Hospital, Sichuan, China (IRB number: 2023-0003) and performed in accordance with Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

All authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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A CT-based radiomics nomogram for the preoperative prediction of perineural invasion in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

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Abstract

Background

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Introduction

Materials and Methods

Patients

Pathological PNI diagnosis

CT image acquisition

CT image analysis

Tumor segmentation

Radiomics extraction and selection

Nomogram construction

Statistical analysis

Results

Clinical characteristics

Radiomics feature selection and model construction

Nomogram construction

Discussion

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