The role of radiomics in hepato-bilio-pancreatic surgery: a literature review

Abstract

Radiomics is an advanced computational analysis of biomedical images that aims to obtain a detailed, objective, and multidimensional characterization of biological tissues. Radiomics features ultimately represent the physiopathology of the tissue under study and can be used to characterize and quantify the spatial distribution and interactions between the voxels that compose a biomedical image. The aim of this paper was to review the current role of radiomics in hepato-bilio-pancreatic surgery by analyzing systematic reviews, meta-analyses and the most relevant published series. Literature data revealed that radiomics is a promising tool in improving the non-invasive characterization and preoperative staging of hepato-bilio-pancreatic neoplasms. Nevertheless, there are major limitations in this approach, mainly linked to the lack of standardization in image acquisition, that result in a significant translational gap between research and clinical practice.