Cancers
Peritumoral Radiomic Deviation on DCE-MRI Exceeds the Bilateral Normal-Appearing Parenchymal Distance in Breast Cancer: A Within-Patient Multi-Metric Study
By Zeynep Hilal Kilimci, Demet Doğan, Kağan Gökçe and 2 others.
Abstract
Background
The imaging-defined peritumoral region may contain quantitative imaging information beyond that captured by the tumor core, but its radiomic deviation from normal-appearing breast parenchyma remains insufficiently characterized. This retrospective single-center study investigated whether peritumoral-to-normal radiomic distances exceed the within-patient bilateral normal-appearing parenchymal reference distance. Fifty-six patients with histopathologically confirmed breast cancer and preoperative bilateral dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI were included.
Methods
Single-slice radiomic analysis was performed for four predefined regions: tumor core (T), peritumoral microenvironment (M), remote ipsilateral normal-appearing parenchyma (I), and contralateral normal-appearing parenchyma (C). After quality control, 101 radiomic features were standardized and analyzed using standardized Euclidean, Manhattan, cosine, and Ledoit–Wolf Mahalanobis distances. Peritumoral-to-ipsilateral (dMI) and peritumoral-to-contralateral (dMC) distances were compared with the within-patient bilateral normal-appearing parenchymal distance (dIC).