# Retrieving Patient-Specific Radiomic Feature Sets for Transparent Knee MRI Assessment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02367 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02367/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Deep Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06114/) (2017)
- [On the Efficacy of Small Self-Supervised Contrastive Models without Distillation Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.14762/) (2021)
- [CartiMorph: a framework for automated knee articular cartilage morphometrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01981/) (2023)
- [Patient-specific radiomic feature selection with reconstructed healthy persona of knee MR images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13131/) (2025)
- [Radiomic fingerprints for knee MR images assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20306/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Learning Coarse-to-Fine Osteoarthritis Representations under Noisy Hierarchical Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00718/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Classical radiomic features are designed to quantify image appearance and intensity patterns. Compared with end-to-end deep learning (DL) models trained for disease classification, radiomics pipelines with low-dimensional parametric classifiers offer enhanced transparency and interpretability, yet often underperform because of the reliance on population-level predefined feature sets. Recent work on adaptive radiomics uses DL to predict feature weights over a radiomic pool, then thresholds these weights to retain the top-k features from large radiomic pool F (often ~10^3). However, such marginal ranking can over-admit redundant descriptors and overlook complementary feature interactions. We propose a patient-specific feature-set selection framework that predicts a single compact feature set per subject, targeting complementary and diverse evidence rather than marginal top-k features. To overcome the intractable combinatorial search space of F choose k features, our method utilizes a 2-stage retrieval strategy: randomly sample diverse candidate feature sets, then rank these sets with a learned scoring function to select a high-performing feature set for the specific patient. The system consists of a feature-set scorer, and a classifier that performs the final diagnosis. We empirically show that the proposed two-stage retrieval approximates the original exhaustive all k-feature selection. Validating on tasks including ACL tear detection and KL grading for osteoarthritis, the experimental results achieve diagnostic performance, outperforming the top-k approach with the same k values, and competitive with end-to-end DL models while maintaining high transparency. The model generates auditable feature sets that link clinical outcomes to specific anatomical regions and radiomic families, allowing clinicians to inspect which anatomical structures and quantitative descriptors drive the prediction.