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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Imaging and Image-directed Interventions
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1516995
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing Cancer Imaging Technologies: Bridging the Gap from Research to Clinical Practice View all 14 articles
Histogram analysis of continuous-time random walk and restrictive spectrum imaging for identifying hepatocellular carcinoma and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma
Provisionally accepted
Bo Dai 1*
Yihang Zhou 1 Lei Shen 1 Hanhan Li 1
Ting Fang 2 Jiayin Pan 1
Yan Wang 3
Xiaopeng Song 3 Meiyun Wang 1*- 1 Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhengzhou, China
- 2 West China Fourth Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
- 3 Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China
Background: To compare the ability and potential additional value of various diffusion models, including continuous-time random walk (CTRW), restrictive spectrum imaging (RSI), and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), as well as their associated histograms, in distinguishing the pathological subtypes of liver cancer.Methods: 40 patients with liver cancer were included in this study. Histogram metrics were derived from CTRW (D, α, β), RSI (f1, f2, f3), and DWI (ADC) parameters across the entire tumor volume. Statistical analyses included the Chi-square test, independent samples t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, ROC, logistic regression, and Spearman correlation.Results: Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma exhibited higher values in f1 median, f1 20th, f1 40th, and f1 60th compared to patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, whereas Dmean, Dmedian, D40th, D60th, and D80th percentiles were lower (P＜0.05). Among the individual histogram parameters, f1 40th percentile demonstrated the highest accuracy (AUC = 0.717). Regarding the combined and single models, the total combined model exhibited the best diagnostic performance (AUC = 0.792). Although RSI showed higher diagnostic efficacy than CTRW (AUC = 0.731, 0.717), the combination of CTRW and RSI further improved diagnostic performance (AUC = 0.787), achieving superior sensitivity and specificity (sensitivity = 0.72, specificity = 0.80).Conclusion: CTRW, RSI, and their corresponding histogram parameters demonstrated the ability to distinguish between pathological subtypes of liver cancer. Moreover, whole-lesion histogram parameters provided more comprehensive statistical insights compared to mean values alone.
Keywords: Continuous-time random walk, Restrictive Spectrum Imaging, whole-lesion histogram, Hepatocellular Carcinoma, intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma
Received: 25 Oct 2024; Accepted: 19 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dai, Zhou, Shen, Li, Fang, Pan, Wang, Song and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Bo Dai, Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhengzhou, China
Meiyun Wang, Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhengzhou, China
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