RaCaT: An open source and easy to use radiomics calculator tool

PLoS One. 2019 Feb 20;14(2):e0212223. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212223. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Purpose: The widely known field 'Radiomics' aims to provide an extensive image based phenotyping of e.g. tumors using a wide variety of feature values extracted from medical images. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that feature values calculated by different institutes follow the same feature definitions. For this purpose, the imaging biomarker standardization initiative (IBSI) provides detailed mathematical feature descriptions, as well as (mathematical) test phantoms and corresponding reference feature values. We present here an easy to use radiomic feature calculator, RaCaT, which provides the calculation of a large number of radiomic features for all kind of medical images which are in compliance with the standard.

Methods: The calculator is implemented in C++ and comes as a standalone executable. Therefore, it can be easily integrated in any programming language, but can also be called from the command line. No programming skills are required to use the calculator. The software architecture is highly modularized so that it is easily extendible. The user can also download the source code, adapt it if needed and build the calculator from source. The calculated feature values are compliant with the ones provided by the IBSI standard. Source code, example files for the software configuration, and documentation can be found online on GitHub (https://github.com/ellipfaehlerUMCG/RaCat).

Results: The comparison with the standard values shows that all calculated features as well as image preprocessing steps, comply with the IBSI standard. The performance is also demonstrated on clinical examples.

Conclusions: The authors successfully implemented an easy to use Radiomics calculator that can be called from any programming language or from the command line. Image preprocessing and feature settings and calculations can be adjusted by the user.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted*
  • Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging*
  • Software*

Grants and funding

EP, JdJ, and RB are part of the research program STRaTeGy with project number 14929, which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). RB is financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development [grant 10-10400-98-14002] and by the Dutch Cancer Society, POINTING project, grant 10034.