MRI-based radiomics model for preoperative prediction of 5-year survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Background Recurrence is the major cause of mortality in patients with resected HCC. However, without a standard approach to evaluate prognosis, it is difficult to select candidates for additional therapy. Methods A total of 201 patients with HCC who were followed up for at least 5 years after curative hepatectomy were enrolled in this retrospective, multicentre study. A total of 3144 radiomics features were extracted from preoperative MRI. The random forest method was used for radiomics signature building, and five-fold cross-validation was applied. A radiomics model incorporating the radiomics signature and clinical risk factors was developed. Results Patients were divided into survivor ( n = 97) and non-survivor ( n = 104) groups based on the 5-year survival after surgery. The 30 most survival-related radiomics features were selected for the radiomics signature. Preoperative AFP and AST were integrated into the model as independent clinical risk factors. The model demonstrated good calibration and satisfactory discrimination, with a mean AUC of 0.9804 and 0.7578 in the training and validation sets, respectively. Conclusions This radiomics model is a valid method to predict 5-year survival in patients with HCC and may be used to identify patients for clinical trials of perioperative therapies and for additional surveillance.