IBRDM: An Intelligent Framework for Brain Tumor Classification Using Radiomics- and DWT-based Fusion of MRI Sequences

Brain tumors are one of the critical malignant neurological cancers with the highest number of deaths and injuries worldwide. They are categorized into two major classes, high-grade glioma (HGG) and low-grade glioma (LGG), with HGG being more aggressive and malignant, whereas LGG tumors are less aggressive, but if left untreated, they get converted to HGG. Thus, the classification of brain tumors into the corresponding grade is a crucial task, especially for making decisions related to treatment. Motivated by the importance of such critical threats to humans, we propose a novel framework for brain tumor classification using discrete wavelet transform-based fusion of MRI sequences and Radiomics feature extraction. We utilized the Brain Tumor Segmentation 2018 challenge training dataset for the performance evaluation of our approach, and we extract features from three regions of interest derived using a combination of several tumor regions. We used wrapper method-based feature selection techniques for selecting a significant set of features and utilize various machine learning classifiers, Random Forest, Decision Tree, and Extra Randomized Tree for training the model. For proper validation of our approach, we adopt the five-fold cross-validation technique. We achieved state-of-the-art performance considering several performance metrics, 〈 Acc , Sens , Spec , F1-score , MCC , AUC 〉 ≡ 〈 98.60%, 99.05%, 97.33%, 99.05%, 96.42%, 98.19% 〉, where Acc , Sens , Spec , F1-score , MCC , and AUC represents the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, F1-score, Matthews correlation coefficient, and area-under-the-curve, respectively. We believe our proposed approach will play a crucial role in the planning of clinical treatment and guidelines before surgery.

DNA Methylation-Driven Genes for Developing Survival Nomogram for Low-Grade Glioma

Low-grade gliomas (LGG) are heterogeneous, and the current predictive models for LGG are either unsatisfactory or not user-friendly. The objective of this study was to establish a nomogram based on methylation-driven genes, combined with clinicopathological parameters for predicting prognosis in LGG. Differential expression, methylation correlation, and survival analysis were performed in 516 LGG patients using RNA and methylation sequencing data, with accompanying clinicopathological parameters from The Cancer Genome Atlas. LASSO regression was further applied to select optimal prognosis-related genes. The final prognostic nomogram was implemented together with prognostic clinicopathological parameters. The predictive efficiency of the nomogram was internally validated in training and testing groups, and externally validated in the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas database. Three DNA methylation-driven genes, ARL9, CMYA5, and STEAP3, were identified as independent prognostic factors. Together with IDH1 mutation status, age, and sex, the final prognostic nomogram achieved the highest AUC value of 0.930, and demonstrated stable consistency in both internal and external validations. The prognostic nomogram could predict personal survival probabilities for patients with LGG, and serve as a user-friendly tool for prognostic evaluation, optimizing therapeutic regimes, and managing LGG patients.