Dosiomic and radiomic features within radiotherapy target volume for predicting the treatment response in patients with glioma after radiotherapy.

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to develop interpretable machine learning models using radiomic and dosiomic features from radiotherapy target volumes to predict treatment response in glioma patients.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on 176 glioma patients. Treatment response was categorized into disease control rate (DCR) and non-DCR groups (training cohort: 71 vs. 44; validation cohort: 34 vs. 27). Five regions of interest (ROIs) were identified: gross tumor volume (GTV), gross tumor volume with tumor bed (GTVtb), clinical target volume (CTV), GTV-GTV and CTV-GTVtb. For each ROI, radiomic features and dosiomic features were separately extracted from CT images and dose maps. Feature selection was performed. Six dosimetric parameters and six clinical variables were also included in model development. Five predictive models were constructed using four machine learning algorithms: Radiomic, Dosiomic, Dose-Volume Histogram (DVH), Combined (integrating clinical, radiomic, dosiomic, and DVH features), and Clinical models. Model performance was evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and area under the curve (AUC). SHAP analysis was applied to explain model predictions.

Results: The CTV_combined support vector machine (SVM) model achieved the best performance, with an AUC of 0.728 in the validation cohort. SHAP summary plots showed that dosiomic features contributed significantly to prediction. Force plots further illustrated how individual features affected classification outcomes.

Conclusion: The SHAP-interpretable CTV_combined SVM model demonstrated strong predictive ability for treatment response in glioma patients. This approach may support radiation oncologists in identifying the underlying pathological mechanisms of poor treatment response and adjusting dose distribution accordingly, thereby aiding the development of personalized radiotherapy strategies.

Clinical trial number: Not applicable.