The superior value of radiomics to sonographic assessment for ultrasound-based evaluation of extrathyroidal extension in papillary thyroid carcinoma: a retrospective study.

ultrasonic radiomics in extrathyroidal extension

Abstract

Background: Extrathyroidal extension is related with worse survival for patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma. For its preoperative evaluation, we measured and compared the predicting value of sonographic and ultrasonic radiomics method in nodules of papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Materials and methods: Data from 337 nodules were included and divided into training and validation group. For ultrasonic radiomics method, a best model was constructed and validated based on clinical characteristics and ultrasonic radiomic features. The predicting value were calculated then. For sonographic method, the results were calculated using all samples.

Results: For ultrasonic radiomics method, we constructed 9 models and selected the xgboost model for its highest accuracy (0.77) and area under curve (0.813) in validation group. The accuracy and area under curve of sonographic method was 0.70 and 0.569. Meanwhile. We found that the top-6 important features in xgboost model had no clinical characteristics and were high-dimensional radiomic features.

Conclusions: Our study proved the predicting value of ultrasonic radiomics method was superior to sonographic method for preoperative detection of extrathyroidal extension in papillary thyroid carcinoma. And high-dimensional radiomic features was more important than clinical characteristics.