Radiomics of apparent diffusion coefficient maps to predict histologic grade in squamous cell carcinoma of the oral tongue and floor of mouth: a preliminary study

Background Histologic grade assessment plays an important part in the clinical decision making and prognostic evaluation of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the oral tongue and floor of mouth (FOM). Purpose To assess the value of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)-based radiomics in discriminating between low- and high-grade SCC of the oral tongue and FOM. Material and Methods We included data from 88 patients (training cohort: n = 59; testing cohort: n = 29) who underwent diffusion-weighted imaging with a 3.0-T magnetic resonance imaging scanner before treatment. A total of 526 radiomics features were extracted from ADC maps to construct a radiomics signature with least absolute shrinkage and selection operator logistic regression. Receiver operating characteristic curves and areas under the curve (AUCs) were used to evaluate the performance of radiomic signature. Results Five features were selected to construct the radiomics signature for predicting histologic grade. The ADC-based radiomics signature performed well for discriminating between low- and high-grade tumors, with AUCs of 0.83 in both cohorts. Based on the cut-off value of the training cohort, the radiomics signature achieved accuracies of 0.78 and 0.79, sensitivities of 0.65 and 0.71, and specificities of 0.85 and 0.82 in the training and testing cohorts, respectively. Conclusion ADC-based radiomics can be a useful and promising non-invasive method for predicting histologic grade of SCC of the oral tongue and FOM.