Causal insights from clinical information in radiology: Enhancing future multimodal AI development.

Purpose: This study investigates the causal mechanisms underlying radiology report generation by analyzing how clinical information and prior imaging examinations contribute to annotation shifts. We systematically estimate why and how biases manifest, providing insights into the data generation process that influences radiology reporting.

Methods: This retrospective study analyzes 172,380 chest X-ray reports from 45,561 distinct patients in the MIMIC-IV CXR database.

cMOOC Recommendations to Enhance AI Literacy Among Healthcare Professionals.

Background: Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) are finding their way into many areas of society, including healthcare and show their potential in this domain. To evaluate these new technologies and use them wisely, healthcare professionals need to integrate AI literacy into their curricula in a meaningful way, as they do in other academic fields.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to share initial experiences in the didactic implementation of an online course in health professions education that is designed to strengthen the healthcare community in acquiring AI competences and enable ethical and legal discussion regarding AI.

Two-dimensional vessel wall diffusion anisotropy of human carotids - A novel measure of vascular ageing?

Background: Magnetic resonance (MR) diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a new, non-invasive method to investigate arterial vessel walls. High resolution diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) in combination with a two-dimensional (2D) diffusion gradient sampling scheme has recently been demonstrated as feasible for evaluating diffusivity in the vessel wall of human carotids. We aimed to identify associations of altered diffusivity in human carotids with presence or absence of cardiovascular disease, body mass index (BMI), sex and age in a clinical setting.

Effects of rhythmic-cued gait training on gait-like task related brain activation in people with multiple sclerosis.

Background: Walking impairment is one of the most debilitating symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). A better understanding of brain mechanisms underlying successful gait training could help to improve development of targeted therapy. We therefore investigated changes in brain activation associated with improvements in walking function after rhythmic-cued gait training.

Real-time estimation of the optimal coil placement in transcranial magnetic stimulation using multi-task deep learning.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has emerged as a promising neuromodulation technique with both therapeutic and diagnostic applications. As accurate coil placement is known to be essential for focal stimulation, computational models have been established to help find the optimal coil positioning by maximizing electric fields at the cortical target. While these numerical simulations provide realistic and subject-specific field distributions, they are computationally demanding, precluding their use in real-time applications.

White matter integrity and functional connectivity of the default mode network in acute stroke are associated with cognitive outcome three months post-stroke.

Background: Knowledge about factors that are associated with post-stroke cognitive outcome is important to identify patients with high risk for impairment. We therefore investigated the associations of white matter integrity and functional connectivity (FC) within the brain's default-mode network (DMN) in acute stroke patients with cognitive outcome three months post-stroke.

Methods: Patients aged between 18 and 85 years with an acute symptomatic MRI-proven unilateral ischemic middle cerebral artery infarction, who had received reperfusion therapy, were invited to participate in this longitudinal study.

Wall Enhancement of Coiled Intracranial Aneurysms Is Associated with Aneurysm Recanalization: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background And Purpose: Wall enhancement of untreated intracranial aneurysms on MR imaging is thought to predict aneurysm instability. Wall enhancement or enhancement of the aneurysm cavity in coiled intracranial aneurysms is discussed controversially in the literature regarding potential healing mechanisms or adverse inflammatory reactions. Our aim was to compare the occurrence of aneurysm wall enhancement and cavity enhancement between completely occluded intracranial aneurysms and recanalized aneurysms after initially complete coil embolization.

Fractal-Based Analysis of Arteriovenous Malformations (AVMs).

Arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) are cerebrovascular lesions consisting of a pathologic tangle of the vessels characterized by a core termed the nidus, which is the "nest" where the fistulous connections occur. AVMs can cause headache, stroke, and/or seizures. Their treatment can be challenging requiring surgery, endovascular embolization, and/or radiosurgery as well.

A sex-specific association of leukocyte telomere length with thigh muscle mass.

Objectives: Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes at the ends of linear chromosomes that protect against DNA degradation. Telomeres shorten during normal cell divisions and therefore, telomere length is an indicator of mitotic-cell age. In humans, telomere shortening is a potential biomarker for disease risk, progression and premature death.

Workflow assessment of an augmented reality application for planning of perforator flaps in plastic reconstructive surgery: Game or game changer?

Objective: In contrast to the rising amount of financial investments for research and development in medical technology worldwide is the lack of usability and clinical readiness of the produced systems. We evaluated an augmented reality (AR) setup under development for preoperative perforator vessel mapping for elective autologous breast reconstruction.

Methods: In this grant-supported research pilot, we used magnetic resonance angiography data (MR-A) of the trunk to superimpose the scans on the corresponding patients with hands-free AR goggles to identify regions-of-interest for surgical planning.

Information extraction from German radiological reports for general clinical text and language understanding.

Recent advances in deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) have opened many new opportunities for automatic text understanding and text processing in the medical field. This is of great benefit as many clinical downstream tasks rely on information from unstructured clinical documents. However, for low-resource languages like German, the use of modern text processing applications that require a large amount of training data proves to be difficult, as only few data sets are available mainly due to legal restrictions.

Reproducibility of artificial intelligence models in computed tomography of the head: a quantitative analysis.

When developing artificial intelligence (AI) software for applications in radiology, the underlying research must be transferable to other real-world problems. To verify to what degree this is true, we reviewed research on AI algorithms for computed tomography of the head. A systematic review was conducted according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Incidence of Developmental Venous Anomalies in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis: A 3 Tesla MRI Study.

Objectives: There is evidence of involvement of the venous system in multiple sclerosis (MS). If this bears also an association with the frequency and extent of developmental venous anomalies (DVA) still has to be determined. We therefore investigated this in patients with different phenotypes of MS and in comparison, to a control population.

Effects of actual and imagined music-cued gait training on motor functioning and brain activity in people with multiple sclerosis: protocol of a randomised parallel multicentre trial.

Introduction: Motor imagery (MI) refers to the mental rehearsal of a physical action without muscular activity. Our previous studies showed that MI combined with rhythmic-auditory cues improved walking, fatigue and quality of life (QoL) in people with multiple sclerosis (pwMS). Largest improvements were seen after music and verbally cued MI.

Effects of Alirocumab on Triglyceride Metabolism: A Fat-Tolerance Test and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Study.

Background: PCSK9 antibodies strongly reduce LDL cholesterol. The effects of PCSK9 antibodies on triglyceride metabolism are less pronounced. The present study aimed to investigate in detail the effects of alirocumab on triglycerides, triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, and lipase regulators.

Short-Term Treatment with Alirocumab, Flow-Dependent Dilatation of the Brachial Artery and Use of Magnetic Resonance Diffusion Tensor Imaging to Evaluate Vascular Structure: An Exploratory Pilot Study.

Background: Short-term effects of alirocumab on vascular function have hardly been investigated. Moreover, there is a scarce of reliable non-invasive methods to evaluate atherosclerotic changes of the vasculature. The ALIROCKS trial was performed to address these issues using standard ultrasound-based procedures and a completely novel magnetic resonance-based imaging technique.

Investigation of the Relationship between the Mid_Thigh Adipose Tissue Distribution Measured by MRI and Serum Osteocalcin-A Sex-Based Approach.

Osteocalcin, in its non-carboxylated form, has a positive effect on glucose metabolism. Additionally, osteocalcin levels are related to body composition, especially muscle mass. The relation to the distribution of different adipose tissue types, such as subcutaneous, intermuscular, and visceral adipose tissue, is unclear.

Distribution of subcutaneous and intermuscular fatty tissue of the mid-thigh measured by MRI-A putative indicator of serum adiponectin level and individual factors of cardio-metabolic risk.

Obesity and metabolic syndrome (MetS) are associated with hypoadiponectinemia. On the contrary, studies revealed correlations between the amount of subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and higher serum adiponectin levels. Furthermore, independent association of intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) deposit in the thigh with cardiometabolic risk factors (including total blood cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and triglycerides), and decreased insulin sensitivity, as MetS components, are sufficiently described.

Comparing the Impact of Multi-Session Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal and Primary Motor Cortex Neuronavigated Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (nrTMS) on Chronic Pain Patients.

Repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS) has been shown to produce an analgesic effect and therefore has a potential for treating chronic refractory pain. However, previous studies used various stimulation parameters (including cortical targets), and the best stimulation protocol is not yet identified. The present study investigated the effects of multi-session 20 Hz (2000 pulses) and 5 Hz (1800 pulses) rTMS stimulation of left motor cortex (M1-group) and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC-group), respectively.

Automated MRI perfusion-diffusion mismatch estimation may be significantly different in individual patients when using different software packages.

Objective: To compare two established software applications in terms of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) lesion volumes, volume of critically hypoperfused brain tissue, and calculated volumes of perfusion-diffusion mismatch in brain MRI of patients with acute ischemic stroke.

Methods: Brain MRI examinations of 81 patients with acute stroke due to large vessel occlusion of the anterior circulation were analyzed. The volume of hypoperfused brain tissue, ADC volume, and the volume of perfusion-diffusion mismatch were calculated automatically with two different software packages.

Early Progressive Changes in White Matter Integrity Are Associated with Stroke Recovery.

Information on microstructural white matter integrity has been shown to explain post-stroke recovery beyond clinical measures and focal brain damage. Especially, knowledge about early white matter changes might improve prediction of outcome. We investigated 42 acute reperfused ischemic stroke patients (mean age 66.

Impact of Priming on Effectiveness of TMS in Detecting Language-eloquent Brain Areas in Tumor Patients.

Background And Study Aims:  Language is characteristically human, and preserving it is critical when resecting tumors in language-eloquent brain areas. Navigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (nrTMS) has been used in recent years as a noninvasive technique to identify preoperatively the language-eloquent cortical areas in tumor patients. An important objective is to increase the sensitivity and specificity of nrTMS in detecting language-related areas and increase the positive correlation of its results to that of intraoperative direct cortical stimulation (DCS).

Age is reflected in the Fractal Dimensionality of MRI Diffusion Based Tractography.

Fractal analysis is a widely used tool to analyze the geometrical complexity of biological structures. The geometry of natural objects such as plants, clouds, cellular structures, blood vessel, and many others cannot be described sufficiently with Euclidian geometric properties, but can be represented by a parameter called the fractal dimension. Here we show that a specific estimate of fractal dimension, the correlation dimension, is able to describe changes in the structural complexity of the human brain, based on data from magnetic resonance diffusion imaging.