MRI-based interpretable clinicoradiological and radiomics machine learning model for preoperative prediction of pituitary macroadenomas consistency: a dual-center study.

Purpose: To establish an interpretable and non-invasive machine learning (ML) model using clinicoradiological predictors and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) radiomics features to predict the consistency of pituitary macroadenomas (PMAs) preoperatively.

Methods: Total 350 patients with PMA (272 from Xinqiao Hospital of Army Medical University and 78 from Daping Hospital of Army Medical University) were stratified and randomly divided into training and test cohorts in a 7:3 ratio. The tumor consistency was classified as soft or firm. Clinicoradiological predictors were examined utilizing univariate and multivariate regression analyses. Radiomics features were selected employing the minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) algorithms. Logistic regression (LR) and random forest (RF) classifiers were applied to construct the models. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and decision curve analyses (DCA) were performed to compare and validate the predictive capacities of the models. A comparative study of the area under the curve (AUC), accuracy (ACC), sensitivity (SEN), and specificity (SPE) was performed. The Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) was applied to investigate the optimal model's interpretability.

Results: The combined model predicted the PMAs' consistency more effectively than the clinicoradiological and radiomics models. Specifically, the LR-combined model displayed optimal prediction performance (test cohort: AUC = 0.913; ACC = 0.840). The SHAP-based explanation of the LR-combined model suggests that the wavelet-transformed and Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) filter features extracted from T₂WI and CE-T₁WI occupy a dominant position. Meanwhile, the skewness of the original first-order features extracted from T₂WI (T₂WI_original_first-order_Skewness) demonstrated the most substantial contribution.

Conclusion: An interpretable machine learning model incorporating clinicoradiological predictors and multiparametric MRI (mpMRI)-based radiomics features may predict PMAs consistency, enabling tailored and precise therapies for patients with PMA.