Breast Cancer Diagnosis Using Texture and Shape Features in MRI

Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) breast imaging represents a tool with great potential for the detection, evaluation and diagnosis of breast cancer (BC). Due to its high sensitivity and in combination with medical imaging biomarkers, it can overcome setbacks and limitations manifested in other diagnostic modalities such as mammography or ultrasound. In order to aid and assist clinicians in the diagnosis of BC, a methodology based on the extraction of 2D texture and 3D shape features in MR images is proposed. To categorize breast tumor malignancy, we considered its location in the coronal plane, divided into 4 quadrants (UOQ, UIQ, LOQ and LOQ), and the tumor type according to its genetic information (positive HER2 and Luminal B with negative HER2). In this regard, six different studies were conducted: one per feature type (texture and shape), as well as the combination of both features (texture + shape) for each of the two covariables (tumor type and location in the coronal plane). A dataset of 43 BC patients were considered. A radiomics approach was implemented extracting 43 texture and 17 shape features and using to train 5 different predictive models (Linear SVM, Gaussian SVM, Bagged Tree, KNN and Naïve Bayes). The highest precision result for the tumor type study (74.04% in terms of AUC) was obtained with 43 texture features. Whereas for the quadrant localization study, the highest precision result (67.99% AUC) was obtained as a combination of 3 textures and shape features. Both results were achieved with the SVM with Linear Kernel classification model.Clinical Relevance— This work emphasizes the use of quantitative biomarkers as texture and shape features in combination with machine learning techniques to aid in breast tumor malignancy diagnosis on MR imaging. Moreover, considering the location of the tumor in the coronal plane and its type according to its genetic information may improve the selection of appropriate treatments, survival rate, and quality of life for breast cancer patients.