AI and Cancer Research ── Liver ── 2026-10-12
Liver cancer: treatment, trials and AI
- Abstract
BACKGROUND: Nuclear β-catenin accumulation reflects activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but noninvasive preoperative prediction of this immunohistochemical phenotype remains incompletely established. PURPOSE: To develop and externally validate CT radiomics and topology-based intratumoral heterogeneity (ITH) models for preoperative prediction of nuclear β-catenin expression in HCC. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This multicenter retrospective study included 1029 patients with histopathologically confirmed HCC. Patients from two participating institutions formed the development cohort and were split into training (n=620; nuclear β-catenin-positive, 293) and internal validation (n=267; nuclear β-catenin-positive, 126) sets. Patients from an independent third institution formed the external validation cohort (n=142; nuclear β-catenin-positive, 43). Whole-tumor portal venous phase CT radiomics features and topology-based ITH features were extracted from the audited image-mask cohort. Model discrimination, calibration, and clinical utility were evaluated using AUC, bootstrap 95% confidence intervals, calibration summaries, Brier scores, and decision curve analysis. RESULTS: In external validation, AUCs were 0.677 for the clinical model, 0.862 for the radiomics model, 0.857 for the ITH model, 0.831 for the core ITH model, 0.863 for the radiomics-ITH model, and 0.886 for the stacking model. Compared with radiomics alone, stacking showed a numerical ΔAUC of 0.024 (95% CI, -0.010 to 0.060; P=0.180). CONCLUSION: CT radiomics and topology-based ITH features showed external predictive value for nuclear β-catenin expression in HCC. The stacking model had the highest external AUC, but its improvement over radiomics alone was not statistically significant. If prospectively validated, these CT-based approaches could complement tissue assessment for pretreatment biological stratification.
Journal IF-equivalent: 2.5 (OpenAlex 2-year mean citedness, value as of 2026-10-11, retrieved 2026-10-12; not the official Clarivate IF)Reference: Tan Y, Xu S, Liu X, Liao W, Zhu R, Shen M, et al. CT radiomics and topology-based intratumoral heterogeneity for preoperative prediction of nuclear β-catenin expression in hepatocellular carcinoma. Abdom Radiol. 2026 Oct 10 [Epub ahead of print]. doi:10.1007/s00261-026-05788-4.Checked: Abstract only