An exploratory study to detect Ménière’s disease in conventional MRI scans using radiomics

AbstractObjectiveThe purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate whether a quantitative image analysis of the labyrinth in conventional MRI scans using a radiomics approach showed differences between patients with Ménière’s disease and the control group.Materials and methodsIn this retrospective study, MRI scans of the affected labyrinths of 24 patients with Ménière’s disease were compared to the MRI scans of labyrinths of 29 patients with an idiopathic asymmetrical sensorineural hearing loss. The 1,5T and 3T MRI scans had been previously made in a clinical setting between 2008 and 2015. 3D Slicer 4.4 was used to extract several substructures of the labyrinth. A quantitative analysis of the normalized radiomic image features was performed in Mathematica 10. The image features of the two groups were statistically compared. Results For numerous image features, there was a statistically significant difference (p-value