Breast cancer response prediction in neoadjuvant chemotherapy treatment based on texture analysis

Abstract

MRI modality is one of the most usual techniques used for diagnosis and treatment planning of breast cancer. The aim of this study is to prove that texture based feature techniques such as co-occurrence matrix features extracted from MRI images can be used to quantify response of tumor treatment. To this aim, we use a dataset composed of two breast MRI examinations for 9 patients. Three of them were responders and six non responders. The first exam was achieved before the initiation of the treatment (baseline). The later one was done after the first cycle of the chemo treatment (control). A set of selected texture parameters have been selected and calculated for each exam. These selected parameters are: Cluster Shade, dissimilarity, entropy, homogeneity. The p-values estimated for the pathologic complete responders pCR and non pathologic complete responders pNCR patients prove that homogeneity (P-value=0.027) and cluster shade (P-value=0.0013) are the more relevant parameters related to pathologic complete responders pCR