A Radiomics-Based Machine Learning Model for Prediction of Tumor Mutational Burden in Lower-Grade Gliomas

Glioma is a Center Nervous System (CNS) neoplasm that arises from the glial cells. In a new scheme category of the World Health Organization 2016, lower-grade gliomas (LGGs) are grade II and III gliomas. Following the discovery of suppression of negative immune regulation, immunotherapy is a promising effective treatment method for lower-grade glioma patients. However, the therapy is not effective for all types of LGGs, and tumor mutational burden (TMB) has been shown to be a potential biomarker for the susceptibility and prognosis of immunotherapy in lower-grade glioma patients. Hence, predicting TMB benefits brain cancer patients. In this study, we investigated the correlation between MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)-based radiomic features and TMB in LGG by applying machine learning methods. Six machine learning classifiers were examined on the features extracted from the genetic algorithm. Subsequently, a light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) succeeded in selecting 11 radiomics signatures for TMB classification. Our LightGBM model resulted in high accuracy of 0.7936, and reached a balance between sensitivity and specificity, achieving 0.76 and 0.8107, respectively. To our knowledge, our study represents the best model for classification of TMB in LGG patients at present.