Brain PET Imaging in the Presurgical Evaluation of Drug-Resistant Focal Epilepsy.

Presurgical evaluation aims to localize the seizure onset zone (SOZ) for a tailored resection. Interictal [F]fluorodeoxyglucose PET is now an established test to lateralize and/or localize the SOZ, particularly if MR imaging is negative or if the noninvasive assessment shows discrepancies. PET can show hypometabolic areas associated with SOZ and the potential altered metabolic brain networks.

Symptoms before and after COVID-19: a population and case-control study using prospective data.

Background: Some individuals experience prolonged illness after acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We assessed whether pre-infection symptoms affected post-acute COVID illness duration.

Methods: Survival analysis was performed in adults (n=23 452) with community-managed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection prospectively self-logging data through the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app, at least weekly, from 8 weeks before to 12 weeks after COVID-19 onset, conditioned on presence absence of baseline symptoms (4-8 weeks before COVID-19).

EANM practice guidelines for an appropriate use of PET and SPECT for patients with epilepsy.

Epilepsy is one of the most frequent neurological conditions with an estimated prevalence of more than 50 million people worldwide and an annual incidence of two million. Although pharmacotherapy with anti-seizure medication (ASM) is the treatment of choice, ~30% of patients with epilepsy do not respond to ASM and become drug resistant. Focal epilepsy is the most frequent form of epilepsy.

Characterisation of a novel [F]FDG brain PET database and combination with a second database for optimising detection of focal abnormalities, using focal cortical dysplasia as an example.

Background: Brain [F]FDG PET is used clinically mainly in the presurgical evaluation for epilepsy surgery and in the differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders. While scans are usually interpreted visually on an individual basis, comparison against normative cohorts allows statistical assessment of abnormalities and potentially higher sensitivity for detecting abnormalities. Little work has been done on out-of-sample databases (acquired differently to the patient data).

SARS-CoV-2 infection following booster vaccination: Illness and symptom profile in a prospective, observational community-based case-control study.

Background: Booster COVID-19 vaccines have shown efficacy in clinical trials and effectiveness in real-world data against symptomatic and severe illness. However, some people still become infected with SARS-CoV-2 following a third (booster) vaccination. This study describes the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 illness following a third vaccination and assesses the risk of progression to symptomatic disease in SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals with time since vaccination.

Deep-learning predicted PET can be subtracted from the true clinical fluorodeoxyglucose PET co-registered to MRI to identify the epileptogenic zone in focal epilepsy.

Objective: Normal interictal [ F]FDG-PET can be predicted from the corresponding T1w MRI with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). A technique we call SIPCOM (Subtraction Interictal PET Co-registered to MRI) can then be used to compare epilepsy patients' predicted and clinical PET. We assessed the ability of SIPCOM to identify the Resection Zone (RZ) in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) with reference to visual and statistical parametric mapping (SPM) analysis.

Automatic and manual segmentation of the piriform cortex: Method development and validation in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease.

The piriform cortex (PC) is located at the junction of the temporal and frontal lobes. It is involved physiologically in olfaction as well as memory and plays an important role in epilepsy. Its study at scale is held back by the absence of automatic segmentation methods on MRI.

Pre-training via Transfer Learning and Pretext Learning a Convolutional Neural Network for Automated Assessments of Clinical PET Image Quality.

Positron emission tomography (PET) using a fraction of the usual injected dose would reduce the amount of radioligand needed, as well as the radiation dose to patients and staff, but would compromise reconstructed image quality. For performing the same clinical tasks with such images, a clinical (rather than numerical) image quality assessment is essential. This process can be automated with convolutional neural networks (CNNs).

PET image enhancement using artificial intelligence for better characterization of epilepsy lesions.

Introduction: [F]fluorodeoxyglucose ([F]FDG) brain PET is used clinically to detect small areas of decreased uptake associated with epileptogenic lesions, e.g., Focal Cortical Dysplasias (FCD) but its performance is limited due to spatial resolution and low contrast.

Metabolic patterns in brain 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET relate to aetiology in paediatric dystonia.

There is a lack of imaging markers revealing the functional characteristics of different brain regions in paediatric dystonia. In this observational study, we assessed the utility of [18F]2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG)-PET in understanding dystonia pathophysiology by revealing specific resting awake brain glucose metabolism patterns in different childhood dystonia subgroups. PET scans from 267 children with dystonia being evaluated for possible deep brain stimulation surgery between September 2007 and February 2018 at Evelina London Children's Hospital (ELCH), UK, were examined.

The association between -methyl-d-aspartate receptor availability and glutamate levels: A multi-modal PET-MR brain imaging study in first-episode psychosis and healthy controls.

Background: Evidence from post-mortem studies and in vivo imaging studies suggests there may be reduced -methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) levels in the hippocampus in patients with schizophrenia. Other studies have reported increased glutamate in striatum in schizophrenia patients. It has been hypothesised that NMDAR hypofunction leads to the disinhibition of glutamatergic signalling; however, this has not been tested in vivo.

Volumetric analysis of the piriform cortex in temporal lobe epilepsy.

The piriform cortex, at the confluence of the temporal and frontal lobes, generates seizures in response to chemical convulsants and electrical stimulation. Resection of more than 50% of the piriform cortex in anterior temporal lobe resection for refractory temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) was associated with a 16-fold higher chance of seizure freedom. The objectives of the current study were to implement a robust protocol to measure piriform cortex volumes and to quantify the correlation of these volumes with clinical characteristics of TLE.

Illness Characteristics of COVID-19 in Children Infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant.

Background: The Delta (B.1.617.

Symptom prevalence, duration, and risk of hospital admission in individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 during periods of omicron and delta variant dominance: a prospective observational study from the ZOE COVID Study.

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern, omicron, appears to be less severe than delta. We aim to quantify the differences in symptom prevalence, risk of hospital admission, and symptom duration among the vaccinated population.

Methods: In this prospective longitudinal observational study, we collected data from participants who were self-reporting test results and symptoms in the ZOE COVID app (previously known as the COVID Symptoms Study App).

A case-control evaluation of pulmonary and extrapulmonary findings of incidental asymptomatic COVID-19 infection on FDG PET-CT.

Objectives: To describe the findings of incidental asymptomatic COVID-19 infection on FDG PET-CT using a case-control design.

Methods: Incidental pulmonary findings suspicious of asymptomatic COVID-19 infection on FDG PET-CT were classified as a (positive RT-PCR test) or case (no/negative RT-PCR test). cases were identified using a 4:1 control:case ratio.