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Differentiation of Pathologically Distinct Intracranial Tumors Using SAGE-Based Habitat Analysis: A Multicenter Study.

August 3, 2026pubmed logopapers

Authors

Li X,Chen H,Li S,Tao X,Li Q,Zhao D,Zhang K,Li Y,Liang D,Zheng H,Hu Z,Zhang N

Affiliations (6)

  • Faculty of Data Science, City University of Macau, Macau SAR, China; Paul C. Lauterbur Research Center for Biomedical Imaging, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; State Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
  • Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
  • Paul C. Lauterbur Research Center for Biomedical Imaging, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; State Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
  • Paul C. Lauterbur Research Center for Biomedical Imaging, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; State Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
  • Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany.
  • Paul C. Lauterbur Research Center for Biomedical Imaging, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; State Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China; Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China. Electronic address: [email protected].

Abstract

Preoperative differentiation of meningiomas, brain metastases, and gliomas remains challenging because of overlapping magnetic resonance imaging features and intratumoral heterogeneity. We evaluated whether habitat analysis of multiparametric spin-and-gradient-echo (SAGE) imaging could incorporate spatial heterogeneity into three-class tumor differentiation. This retrospective multicenter study included an internal development cohort of 90 patients scanned at 3.0 T and 5.0 T and an external cohort of 28 patients scanned at 3.0 T. SAGE-derived vascular architecture maps were partitioned by K-means clustering across candidate K values from 2 to 6. Three feature categories were extracted from SAGE parameter maps: global mean parameters, whole-tumor radiomics, and habitat-derived radiomics; their combinations yielded seven feature sets. After ComBat harmonization, 10 classifiers were evaluated using 30-repetition stratified Monte Carlo cross-validation. The model with the highest mean internal validation macro-AUC was evaluated externally. Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) analysis of a prespecified secondary tree-based model examined feature contributions. K=3 was selected as the most parsimonious and reproducible habitat representation. Mean + Habitat K3 + radial-basis-function support vector machine achieved the highest mean internal validation macro-AUC (0.700±0.086). Its external macro-AUC was 0.629. In a post hoc comparison, Mean Only + Linear support vector machine achieved an external macro-AUC of 0.849. SHAP analysis indicated contributions from global mean and habitat-derived features. SAGE-based habitat analysis provided spatially resolved features for three-class intracranial tumor differentiation.

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Journal Article

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