Beyond diagnosis: is there a role for radiomics in prostate cancer management?

Abstract

The role of imaging in pretreatment staging and management of prostate cancer (PCa) is constantly evolving. In the last decade, there has been an ever-growing interest in radiomics as an image analysis approach able to extract objective quantitative features that are missed by human eye. However, most of PCa radiomics studies have been focused on cancer detection and characterisation. With this narrative review we aimed to provide a synopsis of the recently proposed potential applications of radiomics for PCa with a management-based approach, focusing on primary treatments with curative intent and active surveillance as well as highlighting on recurrent disease after primary treatment. Current evidence is encouraging, with radiomics and artificial intelligence appearing as feasible tools to aid physicians in planning PCa management. However, the lack of external independent datasets for validation and prospectively designed studies casts a shadow on the reliability and generalisability of radiomics models, delaying their translation into clinical practice.

Key points

• Artificial intelligence solutions have been proposed to streamline prostate cancer radiotherapy planning.

• Radiomics models could improve risk assessment for radical prostatectomy patient selection.

• Delta-radiomics appears promising for the management of patients under active surveillance.

• Radiomics might outperform current nomograms for prostate cancer recurrence risk assessment.

• Reproducibility of results, methodological and ethical issues must still be faced before clinical implementation.