Radiomic Analysis of Striatal [F]FDOPA PET Imaging in Patients with Psychosis for the Identification of Antipsychotic Response.

Purpose: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a severe psychiatric disorder marked by abnormal dopamine synthesis, measurable through [F]FDOPA PET imaging. This imaging technique has been proposed as a biomarker for treatment stratification in SCZ, where one-third of patients respond poorly to standard antipsychotics. This study explores the use of radiomics on [F]FDOPA PET data to examine dopamine synthesis in SCZ and predict antipsychotic response.

Myocardial Characterization on CT: Late Iodine Enhancement and Extracellular Volume.

Myocardial tissue characterization is fundamental in diagnosing, treating, and managing various cardiac diseases. In recent years, cardiac computed tomography (CCT) emerged as a valuable alternative to cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) for myocardial tissue characterization, with the possibility to detect myocardial scar and quantify the extracellular volume fraction in a single CT study with the advantage of combined coronary arteries evaluation, shorter scanning time, and less susceptibility to device artifacts compared to CMR. However, CCT is typically affected by a lower contrast-to-noise ratio and potentially increased radiation exposure.

Comprehensive CT study to assess local and systemic involvement in patients with infective endocarditis: experience from a multidisciplinary team of a tertiary referral center.

Purpose: To evaluate the value of a computed tomography (CT) protocol, including ECG-gated cardiac angiographic and venous phase, in patients with infective endocarditis (IE).

Material And Methods: From January 2019 to October 2022, consecutive patients with IE submitted to total-body CT, including ECG-gated cardiac acquisition in angiographic and venous phase, were enrolled. Transesophageal echocardiography was performed in all cases.

EMATA: a toolbox for the automatic extraction and modeling of arterial inputs for tracer kinetic analysis in [F]FDG brain studies.

Purpose: PET imaging is a pivotal tool for biomarker research aimed at personalized medicine. Leveraging the quantitative nature of PET requires knowledge of plasma radiotracer concentration. Typically, the arterial input function (AIF) is obtained through arterial cannulation, an invasive and technically demanding procedure.

Performance evaluation of the 3D-ring cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) StarGuide system according to the NEMA NU 1-2018 standard.

Background: The application of semi-conductor detectors such as cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) in nuclear medicine improves extrinsic energy resolution and count sensitivity due to the direct conversion of gamma photons into electric signals. A 3D-ring pixelated CZT system named StarGuide was recently developed and implemented by GE HealthCare for SPECT acquisition. The system consists of 12 detector columns with seven modules of 16 × 16 CZT pixelated crystals, each with an integrated parallel-hole tungsten collimator.

The Image Biomarker Standardization Initiative: Standardized Convolutional Filters for Reproducible Radiomics and Enhanced Clinical Insights.

Filters are commonly used to enhance specific structures and patterns in images, such as vessels or peritumoral regions, to enable clinical insights beyond the visible image using radiomics. However, their lack of standardization restricts reproducibility and clinical translation of radiomics decision support tools. In this special report, teams of researchers who developed radiomics software participated in a three-phase study (September 2020 to December 2022) to establish a standardized set of filters.

Dosiomic-based prediction of dysgeusia in head & neck cancer patients treated with radiotherapy.

Purpose: To investigate the potential of dosiomics in predicting radiotherapy-induced taste distortion (dysgeusia) in head & neck (H&N) cancer.

Methods: A cohort of 80 H&N cancer patients treated with radical or adjuvant radiotherapy and with a follow-up of at least 24 months was enrolled. Treatment information, as well as tobacco and alcohol consumption were also collected.

Additional Value of PET and CT Image-Based Features in the Detection of Occult Lymph Node Metastases in Lung Cancer: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

Lung cancer represents the second most common malignancy worldwide and lymph node (LN) involvement serves as a crucial prognostic factor for tailoring treatment approaches. Invasive methods, such as mediastinoscopy and endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA), are employed for preoperative LN staging. Among the preoperative non-invasive diagnostic methods, computed tomography (CT) and, recently, positron emission tomography (PET)/CT with fluorine-18-fludeoxyglucose ([F]FDG) are routinely recommended by several guidelines; however, they can both miss pathologically proven LN metastases, with an incidence up to 26% for patients staged with [F]FDG PET/CT.

Prediction models as decision-support tools for virtual patient-specific quality assurance of helical tomotherapy plans.

Background And Purpose: Prediction models may be reliable decision-support tools to reduce the workload associated with the measurement-based patient-specific quality assurance (PSQA) of radiotherapy plans. This study compared the effectiveness of three different models based on delivery parameters, complexity metrics and sinogram radiomics features as tools for virtual-PSQA (vPSQA) of helical tomotherapy (HT) plans.

Materials And Methods: A dataset including 881 RT plans created with two different treatment planning systems (TPSs) was collected.

Role of radiomic analysis of [F]fluoromethylcholine PET/CT in predicting biochemical recurrence in a cohort of intermediate and high risk prostate cancer patients at initial staging.

Aim: To study the feasibility of radiomic analysis of baseline [F]fluoromethylcholine positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for the prediction of biochemical recurrence (BCR) in a cohort of intermediate and high-risk prostate cancer (PCa) patients.

Material And Methods: Seventy-four patients were prospectively collected. We analyzed three prostate gland (PG) segmentations (i.

Prognostic value of preoperative CT scan derived body composition measures in resected pancreatic cancer.

Background: It remains unclear whether preoperative body composition may affect the prognosis of pancreatic cancer patients undergoing surgery. The aim of the present study was to assess the extent to which preoperative body composition impacts on postoperative complication severity and survival in patients undergoing pancreatoduodenectomy for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was performed on consecutive patients who underwent pancreatoduodenectomy with preoperative CT scan imaging available.

Sarcopenia and Patient's Body Composition: New Morphometric Tools to Predict Clinical Outcome After Ivor Lewis Esophagectomy: a Multicenter Study.

Background: The impact of preoperative body composition as independent predictor of prognosis for esophageal cancer patients after esophagectomy is still unclear. The aim of the study was to explore such a relationship.

Methods: This is a multicenter retrospective study from a prospectively maintained database.

The ImSURE phantoms: a digital dataset for radiomic software benchmarking and investigation.

In radiology and oncology, radiomic models are increasingly employed to predict clinical outcomes, but their clinical deployment has been hampered by lack of standardisation. This hindrance has driven the international Image Biomarker Standardisation Initiative (IBSI) to define guidelines for image pre-processing, standardise the formulation and nomenclature of 169 radiomic features and share two benchmark digital phantoms for software calibration. However, to better assess the concordance of radiomic tools, more heterogeneous phantoms are needed.

Image-derived Input Function in brain [F]FDG PET data: which alternatives to the carotid siphons?

Quantification of brain [F] fluorodeoxyglucose ([F]FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) data requires an input function. A noninvasive alternative to gold-standard arterial sampling is the image-derived input function (IDIF), typically extracted from the internal carotid arteries (ICAs), which are however difficult to segment and subjected to spillover effects. In this work, we evaluated the feasibility of extracting the IDIF from two different vascular sites, i.

Radiomics and deep learning methods for the prediction of 2-year overall survival in LUNG1 dataset.

In this study, we tested and compared radiomics and deep learning-based approaches on the public LUNG1 dataset, for the prediction of 2-year overall survival (OS) in non-small cell lung cancer patients. Radiomic features were extracted from the gross tumor volume using Pyradiomics, while deep features were extracted from bi-dimensional tumor slices by convolutional autoencoder. Both radiomic and deep features were fed to 24 different pipelines formed by the combination of four feature selection/reduction methods and six classifiers.

A Novel Benchmarking Approach to Assess the Agreement among Radiomic Tools.

Background The translation of radiomic models into clinical practice is hindered by the limited reproducibility of features across software and studies. Standardization is needed to accelerate this process and to bring radiomics closer to clinical deployment. Purpose To assess the standardization level of seven radiomic software programs and investigate software agreement as a function of built-in image preprocessing (eg, interpolation and discretization), feature aggregation methods, and the morphological characteristics (ie, volume and shape) of the region of interest (ROI).

Additional Value of PET Radiomic Features for the Initial Staging of Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review from the Literature.

We performed a systematic review of the literature to provide an overview of the application of PET radiomics for the prediction of the initial staging of prostate cancer (PCa), and to discuss the additional value of radiomic features over clinical data. The most relevant databases and web sources were interrogated by using the query "prostate AND radiomic* AND PET". English-language original articles published before July 2021 were considered.

Exploratory Analysis of F-3'-deoxy-3'-fluorothymidine (F-FLT) PET/CT-Based Radiomics for the Early Evaluation of Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Patients With Locally Advanced Breast Cancer.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to evaluate a set of radiomics-based advanced textural features extracted from F-FLT-PET/CT images to predict tumor response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) in patients with locally advanced breast cancer (BC).

Materials And Methods: Patients with operable (T2-T3, N0-N2, M0) or locally advanced (T4, N0-N2, M0) BC were enrolled. All patients underwent chemotherapy (six cycles every 3 weeks).

Typical values for pediatric interventional cardiology catheterizations: A standardized approach towards Diagnostic Reference Level establishment.

Purpose: To define weight-stratified Diagnostic Reference Levels (DRL) typical values for pediatric interventional cardiology (IC) procedures adopting standardized methodologies proposed by ICRP135 and RP185.

Methods: Procedures performed at the pediatric catheterization room of the University-Hospital of Padua were analysed. Patients were stratified into body weight (BW) classes and DRL quantities were analysed for the most performed procedures.

Limiting treatment plan complexity by applying a novel commercial tool.

Purpose: A recently introduced commercial tool is tested to assess whether it is able to reduce the complexity of a treatment plan and improve deliverability without compromising overall quality.

Methods: Ten prostate and ten oropharynx plans of previously treated patients were reoptimized using the aperture shape controller (ASC) tool recently introduced in Eclipse TPS (Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, CA). The performance of ASC was assessed in terms of the overall plan quality using a plan quality metric, the reduction in plan complexity through the analysis of 14 of the most common plan complexity metrics, and the change in plan deliverability through 3D dosimetric measurements.

Impact of acquisition count statistics reduction and SUV discretization on PET radiomic features in pediatric 18F-FDG-PET/MRI examinations.

Purpose: The evaluation of features robustness with respect to acquisition and post-processing parameter changes is fundamental for the reliability of radiomics studies. The aim of this study was to investigate the sensitivity of PET radiomic features to acquisition statistics reduction and standardized-uptake-volume (SUV) discretization in PET/MRI pediatric examinations.

Methods: Twenty-seven lesions were detected from the analysis of twenty-one 18F-FDG-PET/MRI pediatric examinations.

Simulation and optimization models for emergency medical systems planning.

The authors address strategic planning problems for emergency medical systems (EMS). In particular, the three following critical decisions are considered: i) how many ambulances to deploy in a given territory at any given point in time, to meet the forecasted demand, yielding an appropriate response time; ii) when ambulances should be used for serving nonurgent requests and when they should better be kept idle for possible incoming urgent requests; iii) how to define an optimal mix of contracts for renting ambulances from private associations to meet the forecasted demand at minimum cost. In particular, analytical models for decision support, based on queuing theory, discrete-event simulation, and integer linear programming were presented.