The role of fetal MRI-based texture analysis in differentiating congenital pulmonary airway malformation and pulmonary sequestration

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of our study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of fetal MRI-based texture analysis (TA) to differentiate the two most common lung malformations, congenital pulmonary airway malformation (CPAM) and pulmonary sequestration (PS).
METHODS: This retrospective single-center study included 24 patients with CPAM and 8 patients with PS who had a fetal MRI examination between January 2015 and December 2020. T2-weighted coronal images were used for TA. One reader designated the malformation borders and drew a region of interest for TA. The differences of the texture features’ values between the groups were assessed and receiver operating characteristic curves were calculated for each statistically significant feature. A p value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
RESULTS: Forty-eight texture features were calculated for each malformation. Twenty features on T2-weighted images were significantly different between the CPAMSs and PSs. Among these, short-run high gray-level emphasis (SRHGE) and long-run emphasis (LRE), which are gray-level run-length matrix features (GLRLM) parameters, had the largest area under the curves: 0.956 (sensitivity 87%, specificity 95%) and 0.943 (sensitivity 87%, specificity 85%), respectively.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that fetal MRI-based TA may be used to distinguish CPAMs from PSs in fetuses with uncertain pulmonary findings prior to birth.