Radiomics Signatures Based on Multiparametric MRI for the Preoperative Prediction of the HER2 Status of Patients with Breast Cancer

Objectives The aim of our study was to preoperatively predict the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) status of patients with breast cancer using radiomics signatures based on single-parametric and multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Methods Three hundred six patients with invasive ductal carcinoma of no special type (IDC-NST) were retrospectively enrolled. Quantitative imaging features were extracted from fat-suppressed T2-weighted and dynamic contrast-enhanced T1 weighted (DCE-T1) preoperative MRI. Then, three radiomics signatures based on fat-suppressed T2-weighted images, DCE-T1 images and their combination were developed using a support vector machine (SVM) to predict the HER2-positive vs HER2-negative status of patients with breast cancer. The area under the curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated to assess the predictive performances of the signatures. Results Twenty-eight quantitative radiomics features, namely, 14 texture features, 4 first-order features, 9 wavelet features, and 1 shape feature, were used to construct radiomics signatures. The performance of the radiomics signatures for distinguishing HER2-positive from HER2-negative breast cancer based on fat-suppressed T2-weighted images, DCE-T1 images, and their combination had an AUC of 0.74 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.700 to 0.770), 0.71 (0.673 to 0.738), and 0.86 (0.832 to 0.882) in the primary cohort and 0.70 (0.666 to 0.744), 0.68 (0.650 to 0.726), and 0.81 (0.776 to 0.837) in the validation cohort, respectively. Conclusion Radiomics signatures based on multiparametric MRI represent a potential and efficient alternative tool to evaluate the HER2 status in patients with breast cancer.