Du Plessis, TamariskRae, William Ian DuncombeRamkilawon, Gopika DeviRamkilawon, Gopika DeviMartinson, Neil AlexanderSathekge, Mike Machaba2024-05-152024-05-152023-09-01Du Plessis, T.; Rae, W.I.D.; Ramkilawon, G.; Martinson, N.A.; Sathekge, M.M. Quantitative Chest X-ray Radiomics for Therapy Response Monitoring in Patients with Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Diagnostics 2023, 13, 2842. https://DOI.org/10.3390/diagnostics13172842.2075-4418 (online)10.3390/diagnostics13172842http://hdl.handle.net/2263/95995DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : Data are available on request from the corresponding author.Tuberculosis (TB) remains the second leading cause of death globally from a single infectious agent, and there is a critical need to develop improved imaging biomarkers and aid rapid assessments of responses to therapy. We aimed to utilize radiomics, a rapidly developing image analysis tool, to develop a scoring system for this purpose. A chest X-ray radiomics score (RadScore) was developed by implementing a unique segmentation method, followed by feature extraction and parameter map construction. Signature parameter maps that showed a high correlation to lung pathology were consolidated into four frequency bins to obtain the RadScore. A clinical score (TBscore) and a radiological score (RLscore) were also developed based on existing scoring algorithms. The correlation between the change in the three scores, calculated from serial X-rays taken while patients received TB therapy, was evaluated using Spearman’s correlation. Poor correlations were observed between the changes in the TBscore and the RLscore (0.09 (p-value = 0.36)) and the TBscore and the RadScore (0.02 (p-value = 0.86)). The changes in the RLscore and the RadScore had a much stronger correlation of 0.22, which is statistically significant (p-value = 0.02). This shows that the developed RadScore has the potential to be a quantitative monitoring tool for responses to therapy.en© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.RadiomicsSegmentationFeature extractionChest X-raysRadiomics scoreTuberculosis (TB)SDG-03: Good health and well-beingArticle