Discrimination between benign and malignant gallbladder lesions on enhanced CT imaging using radiomics

Background Gallbladder cancer is a rare but aggressive malignancy that is often diagnosed at an advanced stage and is associated with poor outcomes. Purpose To develop a radiomics model to discriminate between benign and malignant gallbladder lesions using enhanced computed tomography (CT) imaging. Material and Methods All patients had a preoperative contrast-enhanced CT scan, which was independently analyzed by two radiologists. Regions of interest were manually delineated on portal venous phase images, and radiomics features were extracted. Feature selection was performed using mRMR and LASSO methods. The patients were randomly divided into training and test groups at a ratio of 7:3. Clinical and radiomics parameters were identified in the training group, three models were constructed, and the models’ prediction accuracy and ability were evaluated using AUC and calibration curves. Results In the training group, the AUCs of the clinical model and radiomics model were 0.914 and 0.968, and that of the nomogram model was 0.980, respectively. There were statistically significant differences in diagnostic accuracy between nomograms and radiomics features ( P <0.05). There was no significant difference in diagnostic accuracy between the nomograms and clinical features ( P >0.05) or between the clinical features and radiomics features ( P >0.05). In the testing group, the AUC of the clinical model and radiomics model were 0.904 and 0.941, and that of the nomogram model was 0.948, respectively. There was no significant difference in diagnostic accuracy between the three groups ( P >0.05). Conclusion It was suggested that radiomics analysis using enhanced CT imaging can effectively discriminate between benign and malignant gallbladder lesions.