Robustness of dual-energy CT-derived radiomic features across three different scanner types

Objectives To investigate the robustness of radiomic features between three dual-energy CT (DECT) systems. Methods An anthropomorphic body phantom was scanned on three different DECT scanners, a dual-source (dsDECT), a rapid kV-switching (rsDECT), and a dual-layer detector DECT (dlDECT). Twenty-four patients who underwent abdominal DECT examinations on each of the scanner types during clinical follow-up were retrospectively included (n = 72 examinations). Radiomic features were extracted after standardized image processing, following ROI placement in phantom tissues and healthy appearing hepatic, splenic and muscular tissue of patients using virtual monoenergetic images at 65 keV (VMI65keV) and virtual unenhanced images (VUE). In total, 774 radiomic features were extracted including 86 original features and 8 wavelet transformations hereof. Concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) and analysis of variances (ANOVA) were calculated to determine inter-scanner robustness of radiomic features with a CCC of >= 0.9 deeming a feature robust. Results None of the phantom-derived features attained the threshold for high feature robustness for any inter-scanner comparison. The proportion of robust features obtained from patients scanned on all three scanners was low both in VMI65keV (dsDECT vs. rsDECT:16.1% (125/774), dlDECT vs. rsDECT:2.5% (19/774), dsDECT vs. dlDECT:2.6% (20/774)) and VUE (dsDECT vs. rsDECT:11.1% (86/774), dlDECT vs. rsDECT:2.8% (22/774), dsDECT vs. dlDECT:2.7% (21/774)). The proportion of features without significant differences as per ANOVA was higher both in patients (51.4-71.1%) and in the phantom (60.6-73.4%). Conclusions The robustness of radiomic features across different DECT scanners in patients was low and the few robust patient-derived features were not reflected in the phantom experiment. Future efforts should aim to improve the cross-platform generalizability of DECT-derived radiomics