Predictive value of clinical and radiomic features for radiation therapy response in patients with lymph node‐positive head and neck cancer

The study aimed to develop predictive models for survival and radiation therapy response in head and neck cancer with metastatic lymph nodes using radiomics- and clinical-based features. Radiomic features were extracted from volumes of interest of lymph nodes, and multivariate models were built using both radiomic and clinical features. The study identified two radiomic features significantly predictive for locoregional failure and five radiomic features plus two clinical features significantly predictive for both progression-free survival and overall survival. The area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic curve combining clinical and radiomic predictors for progression-free survival and overall survival resulted in 0.71 and 0.77, respectively. However, external independent validation is required to confirm these findings.