Radiomics Response Signature for Identification of Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Sensitive to Therapies Targeting EGFR Pathway

BACKGROUND: The authors sought to forecast survival and enhance treatment decisions for patients with liver metastatic colorectal cancer by using on-treatment radiomics signature to predict tumor sensitiveness to irinotecan, 5-fluorouracil, and leucovorin (FOLFIRI) alone (F) or in combination with cetuximab (FC). METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 667 metastatic colorectal cancer patients treated with F or FC. Computed tomography quality was classified as high (HQ) or standard (SD). Four datasets were created using the nomenclature (treatment) - (quality). Patients were randomly assigned (2:1) to training or validation sets: FCHQ: 78:38, FCSD: 124:62, FHQ: 78:51, FSD: 158:78. Four tumor-imaging biomarkers measured quantitative radiomics changes between standard of care computed tomography scans at baseline and 8 weeks. Using machine learning, the performance of the signature to classify tumors as treatment sensitive or treatment insensitive was trained and validated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Hazard ratio and Cox regression models evaluated association with overall survival (OS). RESULTS: The signature (area under the ROC curve 95% confidence interval (CI)) used temporal decrease in tumor spatial heterogeneity plus boundary infiltration to successfully predict sensitivity to antiepidermal growth factor receptor therapy (FCHQ: 0.80 95% CI = 0.69 to 0.94, FCSD: 0.72 95% CI = 0.59 to 0.83) but failed with chemotherapy (FHQ: 0.59 95% CI = 0.44 to 0.72, FSD: 0.55 95% CI = 0.43 to 0.66). In cetuximab-containing sets, radiomics signature outperformed existing biomarkers (KRAS-mutational status, and tumor shrinkage by RECIST 1.1) for detection of treatment sensitivity and was strongly associated with OS (two-sided P < .005). CONCLUSIONS: Radiomics response signature can serve as an intermediate surrogate marker of OS. The signature outperformed known biomarkers in providing an early prediction of treatment sensitivity and could be used to guide cetuximab treatment continuation decisions.