{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]],"date-time":"2026-06-15T13:28:07Z","timestamp":1781530087266,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,5]],"date-time":"2025-02-05T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1738713600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Endocrinol."],"abstract":"<jats:sec><jats:title>Background<\/jats:title><jats:p>The aim of the study was to explore a radiomic model that could assist physicians in the diagnosis of central precocious puberty (CPP). A predictive model based on radiomic features (RFs), extracted form magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the pituitary gland, was thus developed to distinguish between CPP and control subjects.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title><jats:p>45 girls with confirmed diagnosis of CPP (CA:8.4 \u00b1 0.9 yr) according to the current criteria and 47 age-matched pre-pubertal control subjects (CA:8.7 \u00b1 1.2 yr) were retrospectively enrolled. Two readers (R1, R2) blindly segmented the pituitary gland on MRI studies for RFs and performed a manual estimation of the pituitary volume. Radiomics was compared against pituitary volume in terms of predictive performances (metrics: ROC-AUC, accuracy, sensitivity and specificity) and reliability (metric: intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC). Pearson correlation between RFs and auxological, biochemical, and ultrasound data was also computed.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results<\/jats:title><jats:p>Two different radiomic parameters, Shape Surface Volume Ratio and Glrlm Gray Level Non-Uniformity, predicted CPP with a high diagnostic accuracy (ROC-AUC 0.81 \u00b1 0.08) through the application of our ML algorithm. Anthropometric variables were not confounding factors of these RFs suggesting that premature thelarche and\/or pubarche would not be potentially misclassified. The selected RFs correlated with baseline and peak LH (p &amp;lt; 0.05) after GnRH stimulation. The diagnostic sensitivity was improved compared to pituitary volume only (0.76 versus 0.68, p&amp;lt;0.001) and demonstrated higher inter-reader reliability (ICC&amp;gt;0.57 versus ICC=0.46).<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Discussion<\/jats:title><jats:p>Radiomics is a promising tool to diagnose CPP as it reflects also functional aspects. Further studies are warranted to validate these preliminary data.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fendo.2025.1496554","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,5]],"date-time":"2025-02-05T05:18:19Z","timestamp":1738732699000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Magnetic resonance imaging -based radiomics of the pituitary gland is highly predictive of precocious puberty in girls: a pilot 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