Survival prediction of patients affected by brain tumors provides essential information to guide surgical planning, adjuvant treatment selection, and patient counseling. Current reliance on clinical factors, such as Karnofsky Performance Status Scale, and simplistic radiological characteristics are, however, inadequate for survival prediction in tumors such as glioma that demonstrate molecular and clinical heterogeneity with variable survival outcomes. ⋯ Here, we provide an overview of current literature that apply computational analysis tools such as radiomics and machine learning methods to the pipeline of image preprocessing, tumor segmentation, feature extraction, and construction of classifiers to establish survival prediction models based on neuroimaging. We also discuss challenges relating to the development and evaluation of such models and explore ethical issues surrounding the future use of machine learning predictions.
Computational NeuroSurgery (CNS) Lab, Macquarie Medical School, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.