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• Clinical Article •
The value of Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI radiomics in predicting Glypican-3 positive expression in hepatocellular carcinoma
LI Yaosen  DAI Hui  FENG Mengmeng  LIU Yuanqing  MIAO Huanmin 

Cite this article as: LI Y S, DAI H, FENG M M, et al. The value of Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI radiomics in predicting Glypican-3 positive expression in hepatocellular carcinoma[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2025, 16(2): 44-50, 58. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.02.007.


[Abstract] Objective To investigate the radiomics prediction of Glypican-3 (GPC3) positive expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) based on gadolinium ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA) MRI.Materials and Methods The clinical indicators, MRI plain scan and enhanced imaging data of 126 HCC patients with GPC3 positive (77 cases) and negative (49 cases) in the First Affiliated Hospital of Suzhou University from January 2016 to June 2023 were retrospectively collected and analyzed. The clinical indicators included age, gender, hepatitis B infection, hepatitis B core antibody, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), carbohydrate antigen 199 (CA199), carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125). The patients received hepatectomy or needle biopsy, and Gd-EOB-DTPA MRI was performed within one month before the operation. Manually delineate the three-dimensional volume of interest of the lesion on five sequences of arterial phase AP, portal venous phase PVP, transitional phase TP, hepatobiliary phase HBP, and T2 weighted imaging T2WI in the transverse axis of MRI images, and extract the radiomics features of the lesion. After Pearson correlation analysis feature screening, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression feature dimensionality reduction was performed to construct logistic regression models for clinical indicators, single sequences, and multiple sequences. Clinical indicators were combined with feature subsets from multiple sequence omics to construct a comprehensive nomogram for predicting GPC3 positive expression in HCC. Perform calibration curves to validate the comprehensive model of clinical indicators combined with multi-sequence omics, and use decision curve analysis to evaluate clinical utility.Results The infection of AFP and hepatitis B in the clinical indicators was independently related to the positive expression of GPC3. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for the clinical indicator model training set is 0.827 (95% CI: 0.742 to 0.913), while the AUC for the test set is 0.779 (95% CI: 0.632 to 0.925). The radiomics models based on single-sequence MRI, including AP, PVP, TP, HBP, and T2WI sequences, demonstrate moderate predictive performance, with AUC values for the training set of 0.804 (95% CI: 0.713 to 0.894), 0.801 (95% CI: 0.711 to 0.892), 0.796 (95% CI: 0.706 to 0.887), 0.761 (95% CI: 0.660 to 0.863), 0.733 (95% CI: 0.620 to 0.845), respectively. The AUC values for the test set are 0.724 (95% CI: 0.555 to 0.894), 0.755 (95% CI: 0.597 to 0.912), 0.770 (95% CI: 0.619 to 0.920), 0.782 (95% CI: 0.610 to 0.947), 0.730 (95% CI: 0.561 to 0.900), respectively. The multi-sequence MRI radiomics model has an AUC value of 0.930 (95% CI: 0.879 to 0.981) for the training set and 0.870 (95% CI: 0.751 to 0.989) for the test set. The combined clinical indicators and multi-sequence radiomics comprehensive model shows good predictive performance, with an AUC value of 0.958 (95% CI: 0.919 to 0.997) for the training set and 0.903 (95% CI: 0.808 to 0.998) for the test set, a sensitivity of 86.4%, and a specificity of 86.7%. The calibration curve showed that the predicted GPC3 status was in good consistency with the actual GPC3 states. Decision curve analysis shows that the comprehensive model has good clinical practicality.Conclusions A preoperative comprehensive nomogram based on clinical indicators and multi-sequence MRI radiomics can non-invasively and effectively predict GPC3 positive expression in HCC.
[Keywords] hepatocellular carcinoma；Glypican-3；Gd-EOB-DTPA；magnetic resonance imaging；radiomics

LI Yaosen1, 2   DAI Hui1   FENG Mengmeng1   LIU Yuanqing1   MIAO Huanmin1*  

1 Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China

2 Department of Radiology, Wuxi Huishan Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Wuxi 214100, China

Corresponding author: MIAO H M, E-mail: miaohuanmin35@163.com

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2024-09-20
Accepted  2025-02-10
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.02.007
Cite this article as: LI Y S, DAI H, FENG M M, et al. The value of Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI radiomics in predicting Glypican-3 positive expression in hepatocellular carcinoma[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2025, 16(2): 44-50, 58. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.02.007.

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