Abstract
BACKGROUND: Multiple myeloma (MM) is a heterogeneous malignancy with prognosis significantly affected by high-risk cytogenetic abnormalities (HRCAs). Traditional detection using fluorescence in situ hybridisation is invasive and limited in capturing disease heterogeneity. We aimed to develop and validate radiomics model based on pretreatment [18F] fluoro-deoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomographic (18F-FDG PET/CT) imaging to non-invasively predict HRCAs in newly diagnosed MM patients. RESULTS: Among the 42 candidate models, the Decision Tree classifier utilizing PET active lesions features demonstrated optimal performance in the validation cohort, exhibiting excellent predictive ability (Area Under the Curve (AUC) = 0.89), significantly outperforming the PET metrics model (AUC = 0.84) and clinical model (AUC = 0.74). SHapley Additive exPlanations analysis identified the PET-derived feature as the most important contributor to the model's predictive capacity. The model stratified patients into high-risk and low-risk groups, with the high-risk group exhibiting significantly worse PFS and OS (median PFS: high-risk 24.5 months vs. low-risk 29 months; p = 0.0360; median OS: high-risk 33.5 months vs. low-risk 50 months; p = 0.0023). CONCLUSION: As a non-invasive imaging biomarker, PET/CT radiomics holds potential for predicting high-risk cytogenetic status and facilitating patient prognosis stratification Further large-scale, multi-center prospective validations are essential to confirm its utility for personalized therapeutic decision-making in MM.