Spatial pattern-driven interpretable model and biological correlates in brain glioblastoma-lymphoma differentiation
Glioblastoma (GBM) and primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) often exhibit overlapping appearances on routine MRI, complicating pre-treatment diagnosis. In 1,109 patients from five centers, we constructed standard-space tumor probabilistic maps and derived atlas-anchored spatial features to augment conventional radiomics. The spatial radiomics classifier outperformed radiomics alone (external test area under the ROC curve [AUC], 0.98) with acceptable calibration and decision curve benefit, and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP)-enabled anatomy-grounded interpretation. Aligning tumor localization with the Allen Human Brain Atlas and a normative functional connectome linked GBM-enriched territories to developmental-oncogenic programs and network hubness, whereas PCNSL-enriched territories showed immune-inflammatory/proliferative programs, and associations with network hubness did not survive spatial-autocorrelation correction. These results provide shareable reference maps and an interpretable, multicenter-generalizing tool for GBM-PCNSL differentiation, while offering biological context for diagnosis-specific location susceptibility.
Authors
- Zhiqiang Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3993-7330)
- Kaiyan Su
- Dante Mantini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6485-5559)
- Haohui Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-3634)
- Qiang Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6785-7178)
- G. Liu
- Yì Wáng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3676-9183)
- Lingyu Kong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7385-6059)
- Wei You
- Weihua Liao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1926-3527)
- Xiaorui Su (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7888-9095)
- X Wei
- Wei Liao
- Jianrui Li
- Guangming Lu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4913-2314)
- Jianguo Xia
- Ji Zhang
- Qiang Yue
- Weizhong Tian
- Bing Zhang
- Tianliang Zhan
Institutions
- Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine (CN)
- Central South University (CN)
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Nantong University (CN)
- Sichuan University (CN)
- Nanjing General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command (CN)
- Soochow University (CN)
- West China Hospital of Sichuan University (CN)
- Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital (CN)
- The Affiliated Taizhou People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University (CN)
- Wuhan General Hospital of Guangzhou (CN)
- Xiangya Hospital Central South University (CN)
- Taizhou University (CN)
- Nanjing Medical University (CN)
- Nanjing University (CN)
- KU Leuven (BE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- iScience
- Published
- 2026-08-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.117281
- Primary Topic
- Radiomics and Machine Learning in Medical Imaging
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China