Ultrasound GLCM texture analysis of radiation-induced acute toxicity following breast cancer radiotherapy

The aim of this study is to identify ultrasound texture features to characterize radiation-associated acute breast toxicity in women following radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer. We investigated a series of sonographic features obtained from the gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) - a second order statistical method of texture analysis. These features were tested in a pilot study of 42 postradiotherapy patients. The mean follow-up time for the postradiotherapy patients was 6 weeks. Each participant underwent an ultrasound study in which ultrasound scans were performed on the bilateral breast, generating a total of 42 post irradiation breasts exams After specifying the region of interest on the B-mode images and computing the sonographic features based off the severity grading, we observed statistically significant differences in the quantification of the autocorrelation, correlation, entropy, homogeneity between moderate and severe groups. These results demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of the GLCM method for assessing breast toxicity levels from ultrasound imaging data.