MRI‐based clinical‐radiomics nomogram model for predicting microvascular invasion in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract Background Preoperative microvascular invasion (MVI) of liver cancer is an effective method to reduce the recurrence rate of liver cancer. Hepatectomy with extended resection and additional adjuvant or targeted therapy can significantly improve the survival rate of MVI+ patients by eradicating micrometastasis. Preoperative prediction of MVI status is of great clinical significance for surgical decision‐making and the selection of other adjuvant therapy strategies to improve the prognosis of patients. Purpose Established a radiomics machine learning model based on multimodal MRI and clinical data, and analyzed the preoperative prediction value of this model for microvascular invasion (MVI) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Method The preoperative liver MRI data and clinical information of 130 HCC patients who were pathologically confirmed to be pathologically confirmed were retrospectively studied. These patients were divided into MVI‐positive group (MVI+) and MVI‐negative group (MVI‐) based on postoperative pathology. After a series of dimensionality reduction analysis, six radiomic features were finally selected. Then, linear support vector machine (linear SVM), support vector machine with rbf kernel function (rbf‐SVM), logistic regression (LR), Random forest (RF) and XGBoost (XGB) algorithms were used to establish the MVI prediction model for preoperative HCC patients. Then, rbf‐SVM with the best predictive performance was selected to construct the radiomics score (R‐score). Finally, we combined R‐score and clinical‐pathology‐image independent predictors to establish a combined nomogram model and corresponding individual models. The predictive performance of individual models and combined nomogram was evaluated and compared by receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). Result Alpha‐fetoprotein concentration, peritumor enhancement, maximum tumor diameter, smooth tumor margins, tumor growth pattern, presence of intratumor hemorrhage, and RVI were independent predictors of MVI. Compared with individual models, the final combined nomogram model (AUC: 0.968, 95% CI: 0.920–1.000) constructed by radiometry score (R‐score) combined with clinicopathological parameters and apparent imaging features showed the optimal predictive performance. Conclusion This multi‐parameter combined nomogram model had a good performance in predicting MVI of HCC, and had certain auxiliary value for the formulation of surgical plan and evaluation of prognosis.