Hepatitis C related chronic liver cirrhosis: feasibility of texture analysis of MR images for classification of fibrosis stage and necroinflammatory activity grade.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the feasibility of texture analysis for classifying fibrosis stage and necroinflammatory activity grade in patients with chronic hepatitis C on T2-weighted (T2W), T1-weighted (T1W) and Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced hepatocyte-phase (EOB-HP) imaging.


METHODS
From April 2008 to June 2012, MR images from 123 patients with pathologically proven chronic hepatitis C were retrospectively analyzed. Texture parameters derived from histogram, gradient, run-length matrix, co-occurrence matrix, autoregressive model and wavelet transform methods were estimated with imaging software. Fisher, probability of classification error and average correlation, and mutual information coefficients were used to extract subsets of optimized texture features. Linear discriminant analysis in combination with 1-nearest neighbor classifier (LDA/1-NN) was used for lesion classification. In compliance with the software requirement, classification was performed based on datasets from all patients, the patient group with necroinflammatory activity grade 1, and that with fibrosis stage 4, respectively.


RESULTS
Based on all patient dataset, LDA/1-NN produced misclassification rates of 28.46%, 35.77% and 20.33% for fibrosis staging and 34.15%, 25.20% and 28.46% for necroinflammatory activity grading in T2W, T1W and EOB-HP images. In the patient group with necroinflammatory activity grade 1, LDA/1-NN yielded misclassification rates of 5.00%, 0% and 12.50% for fibrosis staging in T2W, T1W and EOB-HP images respectively. In the patient group with fibrosis stage 4, LDA/1-NN yielded misclassification rates of 5.88%, 12.94% and 11.76% for necroinflammatory activity grading in T2W, T1W and EOB-HP images respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Texture quantitative parameters of MR images facilitate classification of the fibrosis stage as well as necroinflammatory activity grade in chronic hepatitis C, especially after categorizing the input dataset according to the activity or fibrosis degree in order to remove the interference between the fibrosis stage and necroinflammatory activity grade on texture features.
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan; Department of Radiology, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, 107 Yan Jiang Xi Road, Guangzhou 510120, Guangdong, China.
Zhuo
Z
Wu
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Osamu
O
Matsui
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Azusa
A
Kitao
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Kazuto
K
Kozaka
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Wataru
W
Koda
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Satoshi
S
Kobayashi
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Yasuji
Y
Ryu
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Tetsuya
T
Minami
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Junichiro
J
Sanada
Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Toshifumi
T
Gabata
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008099:Liver / Q000473:pathology* / Q000821:virology; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000473:pathology* / Q000821:virology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index