Diagnostic utility of magnetic resonance imaging texture analysis in suppurative osteomyelitis of the mandible

Purpose: This study aimed to determine the diagnostic utility of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) texture analysis for evaluating mandibular suppurative osteomyelitis (OM). Materials and methods: In this retrospective cohort study, we analyzed the records of 50 patients with and without OM who underwent MRI between April 2019 and March 2021. The presence or absence of OM served as a predictor variable. The outcome variables were the texture features of the region of interest, which were analyzed. Quantitative parameters based on histogram features (90th percentile) and gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) features (Sum Averg) were calculated using short-tau inversion-recovery data with a region of interest. These six features out of 279 parameters were selected using Fisher, probability of error, and average correlation coefficient methods in MaZda. For the analysis of trivariate statistics, the post-Mann–Whitney test of the Kruskal–Wallis test with Bonferroni adjustment was used, and the p value was set to 0.05. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the diagnostic effect of texture function to distinguish between acute and chronic diseases. Results: One histogram feature and five GLCM features showed differences among the non-OM patients, acute OM patients, and chronic OM patients (p < 0.05). The ROC analysis revealed a high area under the curve ranging from 0.91 to 0.96 for six texture features. Conclusion: The six texture features of the mandibular bone marrow demonstrated differences among patients without and with acute and chronic OM. MRI texture analysis may facilitate accurate assessment of the mandibular OM stage.