Quantitative vessel tortuosity: A potential CT imaging biomarker for distinguishing lung granulomas from adenocarcinomas.

ABSTRACT: Adenocarcinomas and active granulomas can both have a spiculated appearance on computed tomography (CT) and both are often fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) avid on positron emission tomography (PET) scan, making them difficult to distinguish. Consequently, patients with benign granulomas are often subjected to invasive surgical biopsies or resections. In this study, quantitative vessel tortuosity (QVT), a novel CT imaging biomarker to distinguish between benign granulomas and adenocarcinomas on routine non-contrast lung CT scans is introduced. Our study comprised of CT scans of 290 patients from two different institutions, one cohort for training (N = 145) and the other (N = 145) for independent validation. In conjunction with a machine learning classifier, the top informative and stable QVT featu

SUBMITTER: Alilou M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6191462 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature