A Novel Radiomics-Platelet Nomogram for the Prediction of Gastroesophageal Varices Needing Treatment in Cirrhotic Patients
Abstract Background and aimsHighly accurate noninvasive methods for predicting gastroesophageal varices needing treatment (VNT) are desired. Radiomics is a newly emerging technology of image analysis. This study aims to develop and validate a novel noninvasive method based on radiomics for predicting VNT in cirrhosis.MethodsIn this retrospective-prospective study, a total of 245 cirrhotic patients were divided as the training set, internal validation set and external validation set. Radiomics features were extracted from portal-phase computed tomography (CT) images of each patient. A radiomics signature (Rad-score) was constructed with the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithm and 10-folds cross-validation in the training set. Combined with independent risk factors, a radiomics nomogram was built with a multivariate logistic regression model. ResultsThe rad-score, consisting of 14 features from the gastroesophageal region and 5 from the splenic hilum region, was effective for VNT classification. The diagnostic performance was further improved by combining the rad-score with platelet counts, achieving an AUC of 0.987(95% CI, 0.969-1.00), 0.973(95% CI, 0.939-1.00) and 0.947(95% CI, 0.876-1.00) in the training set, internal validation set and external validation set respectively. In efficacy and safety assessment, the radiomics nomogram could spare more than 40% of endoscopic examinations with a low risk of missing VNT (<5%), and no more than 8.3% of unnecessary endoscopic examinations still be performed.ConclusionsIn this study, we developed and validated a novel, diagnostic radiomics-based nomogram which is a reliable and noninvasive method to predict VNT in cirrhotic patients.