Current status and quality of radiomics studies in lymphoma: a systematic review

Objectives To perform a systematic review regarding the developments in the field of radiomics in lymphoma. To evaluate the quality of included articles by the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2), the phases classification criteria for image mining studies, and the radiomics quality scoring (RQS) tool. Methods We searched for eligible articles in the MEDLINE/PubMed and EMBASE databases using the terms radiomics, texture and lymphoma. The included studies were divided into two categories: diagnosis-, therapy response- and outcome-related studies. The diagnosis-related studies were evaluated using the QUADAS-2; all studies were evaluated using the phases classification criteria for image mining studies and the RQS tool by two reviewers. Results Forty-five studies were included; thirteen papers (28.9%) focused on the differential diagnosis of primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) and glioblastoma (GBM). Thirty-two (71.1%) studies were classified as discovery science according to the phase classification criteria for image mining studies. The mean RQS score of all studies was 14.2% (ranging from 0.0 to 40.3%), and 23 studies (51.1%) were given a score of < 10%. Conclusion The radiomics features could serve as diagnostic and prognostic indicators in lymphoma. However, the current conclusions should be interpreted with caution due to the suboptimal quality of the studies. In order to introduce radiomics into lymphoma clinical settings, the lesion segmentation and selection, the influence of the pathological pattern and the extraction of multiple modalities and multiple time points features need to be further studied.