Machine learning based on SPECT/CT to differentiate bone metastasis and benign bone lesions in lung malignancy patients

Abstract Background Bone metastasis is a common event in lung cancer progression. Early diagnosis of lung malignant tumor with bone metastasis is crucial for selecting effective treatment strategies. However, 14.3% of patients are still difficult to diagnose after SPECT/CT examination. Purpose Machine learning analysis of [ 99m Tc]‐methylene diphosphate ( 99m Tc‐MDP) SPECT/CT scans to distinguish bone metastases from benign bone lesions in patients with lung cancer. Methods One hundred forty‐one patients (69 with bone metastases and 72 with benign bone lesions) were randomly assigned to the training group or testing group in a 7:3 ratio. Lesions were manually delineated using ITK‐SNAP, and 944 radiomics features were extracted from SPECT and CT images. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression was used to select the radiomics features in the training set, and the single/bimodal radiomics models were established based on support vector machine (SVM). To further optimize the model, the best bimodal radiomics features were combined with clinical features to establish an integrated Radiomics‐clinical model. The diagnostic performance of models was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and confusion matrix, and performance differences between models were evaluated using the Delong test. Results The optimal radiomics model comprised of structural modality (CT) and metabolic modality (SPECT), with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.919 and 0.907 for the training and testing set, respectively. The integrated model, which combined SPECT, CT, and two clinical features, exhibited satisfactory differentiation in the training and testing set, with AUC of 0.939 and 0.925, respectively. Conclusions The machine learning can effectively differentiate between bone metastases and benign bone lesions. The Radiomics‐clinical integrated model demonstrated the best performance.