Study of radiomics in Glioma
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A study of radiomics in Glioma
IRAS ID
251250
Contact name
James Powell
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Velindre NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 6 months, 0 days
Research summary
The commonest primary brain tumour in adults is grade IV glioma, Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), and roughly 110 new cases of GBM are diagnosed each year through the South Wales Neuro Oncology Service. High grade glioma (HGG) comprise grade III and grade IV gliomas. These are aggressive tumours and current treatment options are limited with a poor overall prognosis. The current standard of care for fit patients with HGG, including GBM, is surgical resection followed by radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy treatment. Despite this intensive treatment, median survival for GBM remains around 14 months and 5-year survival roughly 10%.
Information from standard brain imaging remains limited and a surgical biopsy is required for diagnosis. Equally, biopsy or surgical resection is often limited or unfeasible due to tumour location and the associated risk from damage to surrounding normal brain tissue. Assessing response to radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment remains challenging in HGG particularly when differentiating true tumour progression from treatment-induced changes, known as pseudoprogression.
In this study we will apply an emerging computer based learning technique to analyse brain MRI scans in more detail called radiomics. Radiomics has the ability to extract additional information on tumours from scans by analysing features including tumour geometry and scan signal intensity and texture.
This offers an exciting approach to these challenges in HGG and in this study we will correlate radiomic findings from brain MRI scans of patients with HGG with known genetic and pathological prognostic or predictive biomarkers. Our hypothesis is that radiomic models will provide diagnostic, prognostic or predictive biomarkers for these tumours. This research is clinically focused with the aim of validating radiomic models with the potential for being applied to address some of the clinical questions outlined above and has the potential to provide clinically significant biomarkers for primary high grade gliomas.
REC name
Wales REC 7
REC reference
18/WA/0297
Date of REC Opinion
5 Sep 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion