MRI-based radiomics features uncover the micro-change of dorsal root ganglia lesion for patients with post-herpetic neuralgia.

Objective: To create and authenticate MRI-based radiomic signatures to identify dorsal root ganglia (DRG) lesions in post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) patients generalizable and interpretable. Method: This prospective diagnostic study was conducted between January 2021 and February 2022. Lesioned DRG in patients with PHN and normal DRG in age-, sex-, height-, and weight-matched healthy controls were selected for assessment and divided into two groups (8:2) randomly: training and testing sets. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithm was employed to generate feature signatures and construct a model, followed by the assessment of model efficacy using the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), as well as sensitivity and specificity metrics. Results: The present investigation involved 30 patients diagnosed with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), consisting of 18 males and 12 females (mean age 60.70 ± 10.18 years), as well as 30 healthy controls, comprising 18 males and 12 females (mean age 58.13 ± 10.54 years). A total of 98 DRG were randomly divided into two groups (8:2), namely a training set ( Conclusion: An MRI-based radiomic signatures model has the capacity to uncover the micro-change of damaged DRG in individuals afflicted with postherpetic neuralgia.