Differentiating Multiple Myeloma and Osteolytic Bone Metastases on Contrast-Enhanced Computed Tomography Scans: The Feasibility of Radiomics Analysis

Osteolytic lesions can be seen in both multiple myeloma (MM), and osteolytic bone metastasis on computed tomography (CT) scans. We sought to assess the feasibility of a CT-based radiomics model to distinguish MM from metastasis. This study retrospectively included patients with pre-treatment thoracic or abdominal contrast-enhanced CT from institution 1 (training set: 175 patients with 425 lesions) and institution 2 (external test set: 50 patients with 85 lesions). After segmenting osteolytic lesions on CT images, 1218 radiomics features were extracted. A random forest (RF) classifier was used to build the radiomics model with 10-fold cross-validation. Three radiologists distinguished MM from metastasis using a five-point scale, both with and without the assistance of RF model results. Diagnostic performance was evaluated using the area under the curve (AUC). The AUC of the RF model was 0.807 and 0.762 for the training and test set, respectively. The AUC of the RF model and the radiologists (0.653–0.778) was not significantly different for the test set (p ≥ 0.179). The AUC of all radiologists was significantly increased (0.833–0.900) when they were assisted by RF model results (p < 0.001). In conclusion, the CT-based radiomics model can differentiate MM from osteolytic bone metastasis and improve radiologists’ diagnostic performance.