Combining radiomics and connectomics in MRI studies of the human brain: A systematic literature review

Advances in MRI techniques continue to open new avenues to investigate the structure and function of the human brain. Radiomics, involving the extraction of quantitative image features, and connectomics, involving the estimation of structural and functional neural connections, from large amounts and different types of MRI data sets, represent two key research areas for advancing neuroimaging while exploiting progress in computational and theoretical modelling applied to MRI.

This systematic literature review aimed at exploring the combination of radiomics and connectomics in human brain MRI studies, highlighting how the combination of these approaches can provide novel or additional insights into the human brain under normal and pathological conditions.

The review was conducted according to the Preferred Reported Item for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, seeking documents from Scopus and PubMed archives. Eleven studies (out of the initial 675 records) have met the established criteria and reported combined approaches from radiomics and connectomics. Three subgroups of approaches were identified, based on the MRI modalities used to obtain radiomic and connectomic features. The first group of 3 studies combined radiomics and connectomics applied to structural MRI (sMRI) data sets; the second group of 5 studies combined radiomics applied to sMRI data and connectomics applied to diffusion (dMRI) and/or functional MRI (fMRI) data sets; the third group of 3 studies combined radiomics and connectomics applied to fMRI.

This review highlighted the recent growing interest in combining MRI-based radiomics and connectomics to explore the human brain for neurological, psychiatric, and oncological conditions. Current methodologies and challenges were discussed, pointing out future research directions to improve or standardize these approaches and the gaps to be filled to advance the field.