Diagnostic Accuracy of Radiomics in the Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer: A Systematic Review and Qualitative Assessment Using the Methodological Radiomics Score (METRICS)

Background/Objectives: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive and lethal malignancy with increasing incidence and low survival rate, primarily due to the late detection of the disease. Radiomics has demonstrated its utility in recognizing patterns and anomalies not perceptible to the human eye. This systematic literature review aims to assess the application of radiomics in the analysis of pancreatic parenchyma images to identify early indicators predictive of PDAC. Methods: A systematic search of original research papers was performed on three databases: PubMed, Embase, and Scopus. Two reviewers applied the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and one expert solved conflicts for selecting the articles. After extraction and analysis of the data, there was a quality assessment of these articles using the Methodological Radiomics Score (METRICS) tool. The METRICS assessment was carried out by two raters, and conflicts were solved by a third reviewer. Results: Ten articles for analysis were retrieved. CT scan was the diagnostic imaging used in all the articles. All the studies were retrospective and published between 2019 and 2024. The main objective of the articles was to generate radiomics-based machine learning models able to differentiate pancreatic tumors from healthy tissue. The reported diagnostic performance of the model chosen yielded very high results, with a diagnostic accuracy between 86.5% and 99.2%. Texture and shape features were the most frequently implemented. The METRICS scoring assessment demonstrated that three articles obtained a moderate quality, five a good quality, and, finally, two articles yielded excellent quality. The lack of external validation and available model, code, and data were the major limitations according to the qualitative assessment. Conclusions: There is high heterogeneity in the research question regarding radiomics and pancreatic cancer. The principal limitations of the studies were mainly due to the nature of the trials and the considerable heterogeneity of the radiomic features reported. Nonetheless, the work in this field is promising, and further studies are still required to adopt radiomics in the early detection of PDAC.