Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 7, 2023; 29(1): 43-60
Published online Jan 7, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i1.43
Current status and future perspectives of radiomics in hepatocellular carcinoma
Joao Miranda, Natally Horvat, Gilton Marques Fonseca, Jose de Arimateia Batista Araujo-Filho, Maria Clara Fernandes, Charlotte Charbel, Jayasree Chakraborty, Fabricio Ferreira Coelho, Cesar Higa Nomura, Paulo Herman
Joao Miranda, Department of Radiology, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo 05403-010, Brazil
Natally Horvat, Maria Clara Fernandes, Charlotte Charbel, Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
Gilton Marques Fonseca, Fabricio Ferreira Coelho, Paulo Herman, Department of Gastroenterology, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo 05403-000, Brazil
Jose de Arimateia Batista Araujo-Filho, Department of Radiology, Hospital Sirio-Libanes, Sao Paulo 01308-050, Brazil
Jayasree Chakraborty, Department of Surgery, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
Cesar Higa Nomura, Department of Radiology, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo 05403-000, Brazil
Author contributions: Miranda J, Horvat N, and Herman P contributed to the data curation, investigation, project administration; Horvat N and Herman P involved in the conceptualization and methodology of this manuscript; and all authors participated the original draft writing, the review and editing of the manuscript.
Supported by the NIH/NCI Cancer Center Support Grant, P30 CA008748.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Paulo Herman, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, University of Sao Paulo, 255 Av. Dr. Eneas de Carvalho Aguiar, Sao Paulo 05403-000, Brazil. pherman@uol.com.br
Received: September 21, 2022
Peer-review started: September 21, 2022
First decision: October 18, 2022
Revised: October 27, 2022
Accepted: December 13, 2022
Article in press: December 13, 2022
Published online: January 7, 2023
Abstract

Given the frequent co-existence of an aggressive tumor and underlying chronic liver disease, the management of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients requires experienced multidisciplinary team discussion. Moreover, imaging plays a key role in the diagnosis, staging, restaging, and surveillance of HCC. Currently, imaging assessment of HCC entails the assessment of qualitative characteristics which are prone to inter-reader variability. Radiomics is an emerging field that extracts high-dimensional mineable quantitative features that cannot be assessed visually with the naked eye from medical imaging. The main potential applications of radiomic models in HCC are to predict histology, response to treatment, genetic signature, recurrence, and survival. Despite the encouraging results to date, there are challenges and limitations that need to be overcome before radiomics implementation in clinical practice. The purpose of this article is to review the main concepts and challenges pertaining to radiomics, and to review recent studies and potential applications of radiomics in HCC.

Keywords: Radiomics, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Texture analysis, Radiology

Core Tip: Radiomics is an emerging field that extracts high-dimensional mineable quantitative features that cannot be assessed visually with the naked eye from medical imaging. The main potential applications of radiomic models in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are to predict histology, predict response to treatment, predict genetic signature, predict recurrence, and predict survival. The purpose of this article is to review the main concepts and challenges pertaining to radiomics, and to review recent studies and potential applications of radiomics in HCC.