Predicting the 1p/19q codeletion status of presumed low-grade glioma with an externally validated machine learning algorithm

Purpose: Patients with 1p/19q codeleted low-grade glioma (LGG) have longer overall survival and better treatment response than patients with 1p/19q intact tumors. Therefore, it is relevant to know the 1p/19q status. To investigate whether the 1p/19q status can be assessed prior to tumor resection, we developed a machine learning algorithm to predict the 1p/19q status of presumed LGG based on preoperative MRI. Experimental Design: Preoperative brain MR images from 284 patients who had undergone biopsy or resection of presumed LGG were used to train a support vector machine algorithm. The algorithm was trained on the basis of features extracted from post-contrast T1-weighted and T2-weighted MR images and on patients' age and sex. The performance of the algorithm compared with tissue diagnosis was assessed on an external validation dataset of MR images from 129 patients with LGG from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA). Four clinical experts also predicted the 1p/19q status of the TCIA MR images. Results: The algorithm achieved an AUC of 0.72 in the external validation dataset. The algorithm had a higher predictive performance than the average of the neurosurgeons (AUC 0.52) but lower than that of the neuroradiologists (AUC of 0.81). There was a wide variability between clinical experts (AUC 0.45–0.83). Conclusions: Our results suggest that our algorithm can noninvasively predict the 1p/19q status of presumed LGG with a performance that on average outperformed the oncological neurosurgeons. Evaluation on an independent dataset indicates that our algorithm is robust and generalizable.