{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,27]],"date-time":"2026-03-27T21:03:46Z","timestamp":1774645426590,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"14","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,18]],"date-time":"2024-07-18T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1721260800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Cancers"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Background and purpose: Differentiating pediatric posterior fossa (PF) tumors such as medulloblastoma (MB), ependymoma (EP), and pilocytic astrocytoma (PA) remains relevant, because of important treatment and prognostic implications. Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) has not yet been investigated for discrimination of pediatric PF tumors. Estimating diffusion values from whole-tumor-based (VOI) segmentations may improve diffusion measurement repeatability compared to conventional region-of-interest (ROI) approaches. Our purpose was to compare repeatability between ROI and VOI DKI-derived diffusion measurements and assess DKI accuracy in discriminating among pediatric PF tumors. Materials and methods: We retrospectively analyzed 34 children (M, F, mean age 7.48 years) with PF tumors who underwent preoperative examination on a 3 Tesla magnet, including DKI. For each patient, two neuroradiologists independently segmented the whole solid tumor, the ROI of the area of maximum tumor diameter, and a small 5 mm ROI. The automated analysis pipeline included inter-observer variability, statistical, and machine learning (ML) analyses. We evaluated inter-observer variability with coefficient of variation (COV) and Bland\u2013Altman plots. We estimated DKI metrics accuracy in discriminating among tumor histology with MANOVA analysis. In order to account for class imbalances, we applied SMOTE to balance the dataset. Finally, we performed a Random Forest (RF) machine learning classification analysis based on all DKI metrics from the SMOTE dataset by partitioning 70\/30 the training and testing cohort. Results: Tumor histology included medulloblastoma (15), pilocytic astrocytoma (14), and ependymoma (5). VOI-based measurements presented lower variability than ROI-based measurements across all DKI metrics and were used for the analysis. DKI-derived metrics could accurately discriminate between tumor subtypes (Pillai\u2019s trace: p &lt; 0.001). SMOTE generated 11 synthetic observations (10 EP and 1 PA), resulting in a balanced dataset with 45 instances (34 original and 11 synthetic). ML analysis yielded an accuracy of 0.928, which correctly predicted all but one lesion in the testing set. Conclusions: VOI-based measurements presented improved repeatability compared to ROI-based measurements across all diffusion metrics. An ML classification algorithm resulted accurate in discriminating PF tumors on a SMOTE-generated dataset. ML techniques based on DKI-derived metrics are useful for the discrimination of pediatric PF tumors.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/cancers16142578","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,18]],"date-time":"2024-07-18T14:59:50Z","timestamp":1721314790000},"page":"2578","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Machine Learning Analysis in Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging for Discriminating Pediatric Posterior Fossa Tumors: A Repeatability and Accuracy Pilot Study"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6147-9623","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ioan Paul","family":"Voicu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Oncological Neuroradiology and Advanced Diagnostics Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5028-5102","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Francesco","family":"Dotta","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Oncological Neuroradiology and Advanced Diagnostics Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"},{"name":"Department of Innovative Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry, University G. d\u2019Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Antonio","family":"Napolitano","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Medical Physics Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4507-2740","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Massimo","family":"Caulo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University G. d\u2019Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Eleonora","family":"Piccirilli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Oncological Neuroradiology and Advanced Diagnostics Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"},{"name":"Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University G. d\u2019Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0264-8519","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Claudia","family":"D\u2019Orazio","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Oncological Neuroradiology and Advanced Diagnostics Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5203-7855","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andrea","family":"Carai","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Neurosurgery Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4747-1032","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Evelina","family":"Miele","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Onco-Hematology, Cell Therapy, Gene Therapies and Hemopoietic Transplant, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7952-6771","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Maria","family":"Vinci","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Paediatric Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Research Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Sabrina","family":"Rossi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Pathology Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4901-9952","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Antonella","family":"Cacchione","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Onco-Hematology, Cell Therapy, Gene Therapies and Hemopoietic Transplant, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Sabina","family":"Vennarini","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Pediatric Radiotherapy Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Istituto Nazionale Tumori, 20133 Milano, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3540-4331","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Giada","family":"Del Baldo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Onco-Hematology, Cell Therapy, Gene Therapies and Hemopoietic Transplant, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4408-2373","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Angela","family":"Mastronuzzi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Onco-Hematology, Cell Therapy, Gene Therapies and Hemopoietic Transplant, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0158-4760","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Paolo","family":"Tom\u00e0","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Radiology and Bioimaging Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1142-4904","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Giovanna Stefania","family":"Colafati","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Oncological Neuroradiology and Advanced Diagnostics Unit, Bambino Ges\u00f9 Children\u2019s Hospital, IRCCS, 00165 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,18]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"x1","DOI":"10.1093\/neuonc\/nou327","article-title":"Alex\u2019s Lemonade Stand Foundation Infant and Childhood Primary Brain and Central Nervous System Tumors Diagnosed in the United States in 2007\u20132011","volume":"16","author":"Ostrom","year":"2015","journal-title":"Neuro. 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