Evaluation of harmonization strategies for analyzing multi-center diffusion MRI data of rhabdomyosarcoma

Le résumé fourni par la source

Motivation: Rhabdomyosarcoma is a rare pediatric tumor without known biomarkers for early therapy adjustment. Their investigation requires multi-center patient cohorts and, consequently, data harmonization. Goal(s): Comparison of two harmonization approaches ("ComBat", "generalized linear models (GLM) regression") for evaluating potential differences in performance and outcome. Approach: Tumorous and healthy tissues were segmented. Healthy and tumorous ADC features were harmonized with ComBat, the regression based GLM - on healthy features and applied to tumors. Tumor histology, body area, center information were provided as covariates. Results: In head-and-neck tumors, a stronger correlation between ADC change and survival was observed after harmonization, but not in other tumor locations. Impact: The results suggest that harmonization should be applied to separate groups based on tumor location, thus, allowing the algorithm to focus on inter-center variability. The need for more extensive delineations of healthy tissues is suggested for more robust results.

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