Establishment and verification of a prediction model based on clinical characteristics and positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) parameters for distinguishing malignant from benign ground-glass nodules.

BACKGROUND

To develop and verify a prediction model for distinguishing malignant from benign ground-glass nodules (GGNs) combined with clinical characteristics and

METHODS

We retrospectively analyzed 170 patients (56 males and 114 females) with GGNs who underwent PET/CT and high-resolution CT examination in our hospital from November 2011 to December 2019. The clinical and imaging data of all patients were collected, and the nodules were randomly divided into a derivation set and a validation set. For the derivation set, we used multivariate logistic regression to develop a prediction model for distinguishing benign from malignant GGNs. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of the model, and the data in the validation set were used to verify the prediction model.

RESULTS

Among the 170 patients, 197 GGNs were confirmed via postoperative pathological examination or clinical follow-up. There were 21 patients with 27 GGNs in the benign group and 149 patients with 170 GGNs in the adenocarcinoma group. A total of five parameters, including the patient's sex, nodule location, margin, pleural indentation, and standardized uptake value (SUV) index (the ratio of nodule SUVmax to liver SUVmean), were selected to develop a prediction model for distinguishing benign from malignant GGNs. The area under the curve (AUC) of the model was 0.875 in the derivation set, with a sensitivity of 0.702 and a specificity of 0.923. The positive likelihood ratio was 9.131, and the negative likelihood ratio was 0.322. In the validation set, the AUC of the model was 0.874, which was not significantly different from the derivation set (P=0.989).

CONCLUSIONS

This study developed and validated a prediction model based on

Informations de copyright

2021 Quantitative Imaging in Medicine and Surgery. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/qims-20-840). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.