Assessing the Performance of MRI-Radiomic Prognostic Signatures in Head and Neck Cancer Patients: A Comparative Analysis

The number of radiomic studies has dramatically increased in the last decade. However, the reproducibility of radiomic analyses remains challenging, although being fundamental for their clinical transferability. Herein we proposed an analysis of published radiomic signatures based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for prognosis of overall survival (OS) in head and neck cancer (HNC) patients. Specifically, 5 reproducible MRI-based radiomic signatures were identified and their performance was tested on an external dataset of n = 137 HNC patients. Although the lack of complete methodological details was encountered in the analyzed radiomic studies, the analysis performed herein allowed identifying 3 over 5 significantly prognostic signatures for OS of HNC patients. In particular, the radiomic signature with the highest stratification capability between high/low risk groups, provided a C-index 0.60, HR 2.43 and log-rank p = 0.0022. Overall, the study demonstrated the feasibility of comparing published radiomic signatures on an external dataset (provided that sufficient methodological details are reported). In future, major efforts should be put in reporting radiomic analyses in order to enable their full reproduction in view of their potential translation in clinics.