A review of original articles published in the emerging field of radiomics

Radiomics is primarily focusing on the characterization and monitoring of human cancers. Radiomics research for lung, breast, and prostate cancers is more developed. Positive results account for the majority of radiomics studies. Non-clinical researchers without a medical background dominated radiomics. Prevailing research topics in this field changed on an annual basis. To determine the characteristics of and trends in research in the emerging field of radiomics through bibliometric and hotspot analyses of relevant original articles published between 2013 and 2018. We evaluated 553 original articles concerning radiomics, published in a total of 61 peer-reviewed journals between 2013 and 2018. The following information was retrieved for each article: radiological subspecialty, imaging technique(s), machine learning technique(s), sample size, study setting and design, statistical result(s), study purpose, software used for feature calculation, funding declarations, author number, first author’s affiliation, study origin, and journal name. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed for the manually extracted data for identification and visualization of the trends in radiomics research. The annual growth rate in the number of published papers was 177.82% (p < 0.001). The characteristics and trends of research hotspots in the field of radiomics were clarified and visualized in this study. It was found that the field of radiomics is at a more mature stage for lung, breast, and prostate cancers than for other sites. Radiomics studies primarily focused on radiological characterization (215) and monitoring (182). Logistic regression and LASSO were the two most commonly used techniques for feature selection. Non-clinical researchers without a medical background dominated radiomics studies (70.52%), the vast majority of which only highlighted positive results (97.80%) while downplaying negative findings. The reporting of quantifiable knowledge about the characteristics and trajectories of radiomics can inform researchers about the gaps in the field of radiomics and guide its future direction.