Cardiac Cine MRI Radiomics: Analysis of Feature Reproducibility and Evaluation of Variations in the Context of Heart Failure

Purpose This work investigates the reproducibility of radiomics features of cardiac cine MRI and their applicability for heart failure (HF) characterization. Material and methods Short-axis ECG-triggered cine CMR (cardiac MRI) sequences were acquired with different spatiotemporal resolutions. Segmentation was performed by two experts delineating left ventricle blood pool (LVBP), left ventricle myocardium (LVM), and right ventricle blood pool (RVBP). Intra- and interobserver segmentation agreement was evaluated with Dice Score, Hausdorff and Average Contour Distance. Feature reproducibility was assessed via intraclass correlation to evaluate the influence of image resolutions and observer variability. Feature curves of robust features were compared between HF subtypes and age-matched controls. Results We included twelve healthy volunteers (median age M: 28, interquartile range IQR: 9) for reproducibility analysis, and 19 controls without HF (M: 62, IQR: 11), 22 HF patients with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) (M: 77, IQR: 8),17 HF patients with mildly reduced EF (HFmrEF) (M: 73, IQR: 10), and 15 HF patients with reduced EF (HFrEF) (M: 62, IQR: 14). On high resolution respectively 61 and 63 of 64 features for observer 1 and 2 showed good to excellent intraobserver reproducibility. Higher spatiotemporal resolution had a positive impact on reproducibility. Average LVBP and LVM feature values differ between controls, HFpEF, HFmrEF, and HFrEF but value ranges overlap. Conclusions Most radiomics features showed good to excellent reproducibility, the spatiotemporal resolution being the main cause of variability followed by observer experience. Combined assessment of LVM and LVBP features could enable CMR-based HF subtype classification.