Pancreas image mining: a systematic review of radiomics

Objectives To systematically review published studies on the use of radiomics of the pancreas. Methods The search was conducted in the MEDLINE database. Human studies that investigated the applications of radiomics in diseases of the pancreas were included. The radiomics quality score was calculated for each included study. Results A total of 72 studies encompassing 8863 participants were included. Of them, 66 investigated focal pancreatic lesions (pancreatic cancer, precancerous lesions, or benign lesions); 4, pancreatitis; and 2, diabetes mellitus. The principal applications of radiomics were differential diagnosis between various types of focal pancreatic lesions ( n = 19), classification of pancreatic diseases ( n = 23), and prediction of prognosis or treatment response ( n = 30). Second-order texture features were most useful for the purpose of differential diagnosis of diseases of the pancreas (with 100% of studies investigating them found a statistically significant feature), whereas filtered image features were most useful for the purpose of classification of diseases of the pancreas and prediction of diseases of the pancreas (with 100% of studies investigating them found a statistically significant feature). The median radiomics quality score of the included studies was 28%, with the interquartile range of 22% to 36%. The radiomics quality score was significantly correlated with the number of extracted radiomics features ( r = 0.52, p