A meta-analysis of based radiomics for predicting lymph node metastasis in patients with biliary tract cancers.

Background: To assess the predictive value of radiomics for preoperative lymph node metastasis (LMN) in patients with biliary tract cancers (BTCs).

Methods: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library databases, and four Chinese databases [VIP, CNKI, Wanfang, and China Biomedical Literature Database (CBM)] were searched to identify relevant studies published up to February 10, 2022. Two authors independently screened all publications for eligibility. We included studies that used histopathology as a gold standard and radiomics to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of LNM in BTCs patients. The quality of the literature was evaluated using the Radiomics Quality Score (RQS) and the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS-2). The diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) were calculated to assess the predictive validity of radiomics for lymph node status in patients with BTCs. Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated, and Meta-regression and subgroup analyses were performed to assess the causes of heterogeneity.

Results: Seven studies were included, with 977 patients. The pooled sensitivity, specificity and AUC were 83% [95% confidence interval (CI): 77%, 88%], 78% (95% CI: 71, 84) and 0.88 (95% CI: 0.85, 0.90), respectively. The substantive heterogeneity was observed among the included studies (  = 80%, 95%CI: 58,100). There was no threshold effect seen. Meta-regression showed that tumor site contributed to the heterogeneity of specificity analysis ( < 0.05). Imaging methods, number of patients, combined clinical factors, tumor site, model, population, and published year all played a role in the heterogeneity of the sensitivity analysis ( < 0.05). Subgroup analysis revealed that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based radiomics had a higher pooled sensitivity than contrast-computed tomography (CT), whereas the result for pooled specificity was the opposite.

Conclusion: Our meta-analysis showed that radiomics provided a high level of prognostic value for preoperative LMN in BTCs patients.