Novel cancer therapies for advanced cutaneous melanoma: The added value of radiomics in the decision making process–A systematic review

Abstract

Advanced malignant melanoma represents a public health matter due to its rising incidence and aggressiveness. Novel therapies such as immunotherapy are showing promising results with improved progression free and overall survival in melanoma patients. However, novel targeted and immunotherapies could generate atypical patterns of response which are nowadays a big challenge since imaging criteria (ie Recist 1.1) have not been proven to be always reliable to assess response. Radiomics and in particular texture analysis (TA) represent new quantitative methodologies which could reduce the impact of these limitations providing most robust data in support of clinical decision process. The aim of this paper was to review the state of the art of radiomics/TA when it is applied to the imaging of metastatic melanoma patients.

Precision Medicine and Melanoma: Multi-Omics Approaches to Monitoring the Immunotherapy Response

“…TA is not invasive and able to provide quantitative and spatial information over the volume of lesion and organs at multiple time points [75]. Thus, TA might represent an added value to the analysis of tissue samples that are generally performed only once in a specific tumor site [77]. For this reason, there has been an explosive rise in popularity of radiomic/TA topics and still even more literature continue to be produced, resulting in many methods and applications.…”

“…For this reason, there has been an explosive rise in popularity of radiomic/TA topics and still even more literature continue to be produced, resulting in many methods and applications. In particular, almost all the papers published on the last decade investigated cohorts of patients that underwent MRI or CT, while only a few part of them involved different imaging modalities such as PET or PET/CT [77]. Indeed, clinical trials on melanoma generally involve as standard follow-up protocol CT scan with Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours (RECIST) or MRI when higher resolution is needed as for brain studies [78].…”

“…As above-mentioned, the last step of a radiomics/TA procedure is to construct mathematical models or classifier that can provide prognostic information or be predictors of treatment response. A classifier built using the radiophenotypical properties of the tumor could help the patients stratification and to optimize clinical decision [77]. A wide range of methods for classifier development and validation are reported in literature.…”

Exploring CT Texture Parameters as Predictive and Response Imaging Biomarkers of Survival in Patients With Metastatic Melanoma Treated With PD-1 Inhibitor Nivolumab: A Pilot Study Using a Delta-Radiomics Approach

“…Radiomics is a promising field of research that uses quantitative imaging methodological approaches that could support the oncologist in treatment decisions (19,20). An image-based radiomics approach can analyze quantitative information from the whole tumor volume and the multiple lesions located in different anatomical sites within a single examination (21). CT texture analysis (CTTA) provides a panel of quantitative parameters reflecting intra/inter-tumor heterogeneity associated with a high-risk phenotype (22,23).…”

Mathematical Abilities in Children: An sMRI Analysis With Radiomics

“…Radiomics refers to a type of image analysis mainly applied in the field of precision medicine, that allows researchers to perform a more exhaustive analysis of medical images, by computing and mining a large pool (thousands) of advanced imaging features (Gillies et al 2016). Thus far, radiomics-based analyses have been carried out mostly in oncology, and more recently for lung and cardiovascular applications (Guerrisi et al 2020;Huang et al 2016;Raisi-Estabragh et al 2020). To date, few studies have explored this technique in the area of psychology (Chaddad et al 2017;Sun et al 2018;Cui et al 2020).…”