Glioma Grading by Integrating Radiomic Features from Peritumoral Edema in Fused MRI Images and Automated Machine Learning

We aimed to investigate the utility of peritumoral edema-derived radiomic features from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image weights and fused MRI sequences for enhancing the performance of machine learning-based glioma grading. The present study utilized the Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenge 2023 (BraTS 2023) dataset. Laplacian Re-decomposition (LRD) was employed to fuse multimodal MRI sequences. The fused image quality was evaluated using the Entropy, standard deviation (STD), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and structural similarity index measure (SSIM) metrics. A comprehensive set of radiomic features was subsequently extracted from peritumoral edema regions using PyRadiomics. The Boruta algorithm was applied for feature selection, and an optimized classification pipeline was developed using the Tree-based Pipeline Optimization Tool (TPOT). Model performance for glioma grade classification was evaluated based on accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and area under the curve (AUC) parameters. Analysis of fused image quality metrics confirmed that the LRD method produces high-quality fused images. From 851 radiomic features extracted from peritumoral edema regions, the Boruta algorithm selected different sets of informative features in both standard MRI and fused images. Subsequent TPOT automated machine learning optimization analysis identified a fine-tuned Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) classifier, trained on features from T₁Gd+FLAIR fused images, as the top-performing model. This model achieved superior performance in glioma grade classification (Accuracy = 0.96, Precision = 1.0, Recall = 0.94, F1-Score = 0.96, AUC = 1.0). Radiomic features derived from peritumoral edema in fused MRI images using the LRD method demonstrated distinct, grade-specific patterns and can be utilized as a non-invasive, accurate, and rapid glioma grade classification method.