Predicting Ewing Sarcoma Treatment Outcome Using Infrared Spectroscopy and Machine Learning

Abstract

Background: Improved outcome prediction is vital for the delivery of risk-adjusted, appropriate and effective care to paediatric patients with Ewing sarcoma—the second most common paediatric malignant bone tumour. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy of tissues allows the bulk biochemical content of a biological sample to be probed and makes possible the study and diagnosis of disease. Methods: In this retrospective study, FTIR spectra of sections of biopsy-obtained bone tissue were recorded. Twenty-seven patients (between 5 and 20 years of age) with newly diagnosed Ewing sarcoma of bone were included in this study. The prognostic value of FTIR spectra obtained from Ewing sarcoma (ES) tumours before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy were analysed in combination with various data-reduction and machine learning approaches. Results: Random forest and linear discriminant analysis supervised learning models were able to correctly predict patient mortality in 92% of cases using leave-one-out cross-validation. The best performing model for predicting patient relapse was a linear Support Vector Machine trained on the observed spectral changes as a result of chemotherapy treatment, which achieved 92% accuracy. Conclusion: FTIR spectra of tumour biopsy samples may predict treatment outcome in paediatric Ewing sarcoma patients with greater than 92% accuracy.

Advances in Near Infrared Spectroscopy and Related Computational Methods

“…However, for sake of clarity a tentative and brief overview of these contributions may be helpful to present the Special Issue to the readership. The majority of the articles focuses on applied qualitative and quantitative analyses in a variety of fields [9,11,12,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Roughly, half of these may be associated with pharmaceutical and medical applications [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

“…The majority of the articles focuses on applied qualitative and quantitative analyses in a variety of fields [9,11,12,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Roughly, half of these may be associated with pharmaceutical and medical applications [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Most of the remaining applied studies were directed at agricultural applications [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], well reflecting the ever-growing significance of NIR spectroscopy in this area; a good perspective of this topic is included in a focused review article published in the Special Issue [30].…”

Advances in Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Related Computational Methods

“…The Special Issue has met a remarkably positive feedback with many contributions submitted by numerous scholars and professional spectroscopists performing their active research in academia and industry, resulting in a collection of 30 publications including two exhaustive review articles [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]. The diversity in the application field has been well represented by the submitted manuscripts.…”

“…However, for sake of clarity a tentative and brief overview of these contributions may be helpful to present the Special Issue to the readership. The majority of the articles focuses on applied qualitative and quantitative analyses in a variety of fields [9,11,12,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34]. Roughly, half of these may be associated with pharmaceutical and medical applications [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24].…”

“…The majority of the articles focuses on applied qualitative and quantitative analyses in a variety of fields [9,11,12,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34]. Roughly, half of these may be associated with pharmaceutical and medical applications [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. Most of the remaining applied studies were directed at agricultural applications [25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34], well reflecting the ever-growing significance of NIR spectroscopy in this area; a good perspective of this topic is included in a focused review article published in the Special Issue [30].…”