Radiomics analysis of apparent diffusion coefficient maps of parotid gland to diagnose morphologically normal Sjogren’s syndrome

The study explored more promising radiomics extracted from apparent diffusion coefficient maps for diagnosing Sjogren’s syndrome (SS) without head＆neck MR morphology changes. A total of 119 consecutive SS participants and 95 healthy volunteers were prospectively analyzed by 3.0 T MR including diffusion weighted imaging. Forty-five radiomic parameters were selected and twenty-two radiomic parameters showed significant difference between SS and controls, in which 11 parameters had an area under the ROC curve (AUC) greater than 0.700. The SVM classification model differentiated SS from healthy controls with an AUC of 0.932 and 0.911 in the training and testing sets, respectively.