title: Using texture analyses of contrast enhanced CT to assess hepatic fibrosis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine the ability of texture analyses of contrast-enhanced CT images for distinguishing between varying degrees of hepatic fibrosis in patients with chronic liver disease using histopathology as the reference standard.
  
  
  METHODS
  Following IRB approval, 83 patients who underwent contrast enhanced 64-MDCT of the abdomen and pelvis in the portal venous phase between 12/2005 and 01/2013 and who had a liver biopsy within 6 months of the CT were included. An in-house developed, MATLAB-based texture analysis program was employed to extract 41 texture features from each of 5 axial segmented volumes of liver. Using the Ishak fibrosis staging scale, histopathologic grades of hepatic fibrosis were correlated with texture parameters after stratifying patients into three analysis groups, comparing Ishak scales 0-2 with 3-6, 0-3 with 4-6, and 0-4 with 5-6. To assess the utility of texture features, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed and the area under the curve (AUC) was used to determine the performance of each feature in distinguishing between normal/low and higher grades of hepatic fibrosis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 19 different texture features with 7 histogram features, one grey level co-occurrence matrix, 6 gray level run length, 1 Laws feature, and 4 gray level gradient matrix demonstrated statistically significant differences for discriminating between fibrosis groupings. The highest AUC values fell in the range of fair performance for distinguishing between different fibrosis groupings.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings suggest that texture-based analyses of contrast-enhanced CT images offer a potential avenue toward the non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis.
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States.
authors: Naznin
authors: N
authors: Daginawala
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States.
authors: Baojun
authors: B
authors: Li
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States.
authors: Karen
authors: K
authors: Buch
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States.
authors: HeiShun
authors: H
authors: Yu
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States.
authors: Brian
authors: B
authors: Tischler
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States.
authors: Muhammad Mustafa
authors: MM
authors: Qureshi
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States.
authors: Jorge A
authors: JA
authors: Soto
authors: Department of Radiology, Boston University Medical Center, United States. Electronic address: stephan.anderson@bmc.org.
authors: Stephan
authors: S
authors: Anderson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003287:Contrast Media; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D061330:Multidetector Computed Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D012372:ROC Curve; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media
keywords: Cirrhosis; Computed tomography; Image post processing; Liver; Texture analysis