Prediction of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) status in breast cancer by mammographic radiomics features and clinical characteristics: a multicenter study

Objectives

To preoperatively evaluate the human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) status in breast cancer using mammographic radiomics features and clinical characteristics on a multi-vendor and multi-center basis.

Methods

This multi-center study included a cohort of 1512 Chinese female with invasive ductal carcinoma of no special type (IDC-NST) from two different hospitals and five devices (1332 from Institution A, used for training and testing the models, and 180 women from Institution B, as the external validation cohort). The Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) was employed to establish radiomics and multiomics models. Model efficacy was evaluated by the area under the curve (AUC).

Results

The number of HER2-positive patients in the training, testing, and external validation cohort were 245(26.3%), 105 (26.3.8%), and 51(28.3%), respectively, with no statistical differences among the three cohorts (p = 0.842, chi-square test). The radiomics model, based solely on the radiomics features, achieved an AUC of 0.814 (95% CI, 0.784–0.844) in the training cohort, 0.776 (95% CI, 0.727–0.825) in the testing cohort, and 0.702 (95% CI, 0.614–0.790) in the external validation cohort. The multiomics model, incorporated radiomics features with clinical characteristics, consistently outperformed the radiomics model with AUC values of 0.838 (95% CI, 0.810–0.866) in the training cohort, 0.788 (95% CI, 0.741–0.835) in the testing cohort, and 0.722 (95% CI, 0.637–0.811) in the external validation cohort.

Conclusions

Our study demonstrates that a model based on radiomics features and clinical characteristics has the potential to accurately predict HER2 status of breast cancer patients across multiple devices and centers.

Clinical relevance statement

By predicting the HER2 status of breast cancer reliably, the presented model built upon radiomics features and clinical characteristics on a multi-vendor and multi-center basis can help in bolstering the model’s applicability and generalizability in real-world clinical scenarios.

Key Points

• The mammographic presentation of breast cancer is closely associated with the status of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2).

• The radiomics model, based solely on radiomics features, exhibits sub-optimal performance in the external validation cohort.

• By combining radiomics features and clinical characteristics, the multiomics model can improve the prediction ability in external data.