Fractal dimension and lacunarity measures of glioma subcomponents are discriminative of the grade of gliomas and IDH status

Abstract Since the overall glioma mass and its subcomponents—enhancing region (malignant part of the tumor), non‐enhancing (less aggressive tumor cells), necrotic core (dead cells), and edema (water deposition)—are complex and irregular structures, non‐Euclidean geometric measures such as fractal dimension (FD or “fractality”) and lacunarity are needed to quantify their structural complexity. Fractality measures the extent of structural irregularity, while lacunarity measures the spatial distribution or gaps. The complex geometric patterns of the glioma subcomponents may be closely associated with the grade and molecular landscape. Therefore, we measured FD and lacunarity in the glioma subcomponents and developed machine learning models to discriminate between tumor grades and isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) gene status. 3D fractal dimension (FD3D) and lacunarity (Lac3D) were measured for the enhancing, non‐enhancing plus necrotic core, and edema‐subcomponents using preoperative structural‐MRI obtained from the The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and University of California San Francisco Preoperative Diffuse Glioma MRI (UCSF‐PDGM) glioma cohorts. The FD3D and Lac3D measures of the tumor‐subcomponents were then compared across glioma grades (HGGs: high‐grade gliomas vs. LGGs: low‐grade gliomas) and IDH status (mutant vs. wild type). Using these measures, machine learning platforms discriminative of glioma grade and IDH status were developed. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used to assess the prognostic significance of FD3D and Lac3D measurements. HGG exhibited significantly higher fractality and lower lacunarity in the enhancing subcomponent, along with lower fractality in the non‐enhancing subcomponent compared to LGG. This suggests that a highly irregular and complex geometry in the enhancing‐subcomponent is a characteristic feature of HGGs. A comparison of FD3D and Lac3D between IDH‐wild type and IDH‐mutant gliomas revealed that mutant gliomas had ~2.5‐fold lower FD3D in the enhancing‐subcomponent and higher FD3D with lower Lac3D in the non‐enhancing subcomponent, indicating a less complex and smooth enhancing subcomponent, and a more continuous non‐enhancing subcomponent as features of IDH‐mutant gliomas. Supervised ML models using FD3D from both the enhancing and non‐enhancing subcomponents together demonstrated high‐sensitivity in discriminating glioma grades (~97.9%) and IDH status (~94.4%). A combined fractal estimation of the enhancing and non‐enhancing subcomponents using MR images could serve as a non‐invasive, precise, and quantitative measure for discriminating glioma grade and IDH status. The combination of 2‐hydroxyglutarate‐magnetic resonance spectroscopy (2HG‐MRS) with FD3D and Lac3D quantification may be established as a robust imaging signature for glioma subtyping.