# ConRad: Efficient Conformal Prediction for Radiomics

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08084 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08084/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [A Gentle Introduction to Conformal Prediction and Distribution-Free Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07511/) (2021)
- [Distribution-Free Predictive Inference For Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.04173/) (2016)
- [Conformalized Quantile Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03222/) (2019)
- [Conformal Prediction: a Unified Review of Theory and New Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07972/) (2020)
- [COVID-19 Infection Localization and Severity Grading from Chest X-ray Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07985/) (2021)
- [Kandinsky Conformal Prediction: Efficient Calibration of Image Segmentation Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11837/) (2023)
- [Conformal Prediction for Image Segmentation Using Morphological Prediction Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05618/) (2025)
- [COMPASS: Robust Feature Conformal Prediction for Medical Segmentation Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22240/) (2025)
- [CONSIGN: Conformal Segmentation Informed by Spatial Groupings via Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14113/) (2025)
- [Bias-Aware Conformal Prediction for Metric-Based Imaging Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05263/) (2024)
- [Efficient Conformal Volumetry for Template-Based Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00798/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Radiomic features derived from medical images and segmentation masks are used to support decision making in clinical imaging pipelines. In practice, these features are often computed from predicted masks, but segmentation models can be overconfident or poorly calibrated, making derived measurements appear more reliable than they are. Conformal prediction (CP) provides distribution-free prediction intervals with finite-sample marginal coverage guarantees, but black-box intervals for segmentation-derived radiomics can be inefficient because they ignore test-time information about image appearance, mask geometry, and segmentation uncertainty. We propose ConRad, a conformal framework for scalar radiomic targets that uses covariates derived from the predicted mask, input image, predicted radiomics, and boundary uncertainty to construct adaptive intervals while maintaining coverage. Across five 2D medical imaging datasets and 171 retained radiomic targets, we show that ConRad improves feature-level efficiency compared to baselines while maintaining near-nominal empirical coverage. Ablation results further indicate that segmentation boundary uncertainty features are the largest contributors to interval efficiency.
