Investigation of ComBat Harmonization on Radiomic and Deep Features from Multi-Center Clinical Abdominal MRI Data

Motivation: Multi-center studies often suffer from non-biological variations due to different MRI scanners. This can adversely affect the comparability of MRI radiomic features and deep features. Goal(s): This multi-center study aims to investigate the effectiveness of ComBat harmonization on radiomic and deep features from abdominal MRI data. Approach: We retrieved 3,857 clinical T2-weighted MRI examinations of adult patients from three institutions. The ANOVA test and Cohen’s F score were applied as evaluation metrics. Results: An average of 78.7% of radiomic features, and 74.9% of deep features had significant distribution differences. After ComBat harmonization, none of radiomic and deep features had significant difference. Impact: This multi-center study showed that ComBat can effectively remove non-biological variations of radiomic and deep features from abdominal MRI studies acquired from different MRI scanners and institutions. Future multi-center studies should consider ComBat harmonization to improve data comparability.