Deep Learning for the Detection, Localization, and Characterization of Focal Liver Lesions on Abdominal US Images.

Purpose: To train and assess the performance of a deep learning-based network designed to detect, localize, and characterize focal liver lesions (FLLs) in the liver parenchyma on abdominal US images.

Materials And Methods: In this retrospective, multicenter, institutional review board-approved study, two object detectors, Faster region-based convolutional neural network (Faster R-CNN) and Detection Transformer (DETR), were fine-tuned on a dataset of 1026 patients ( = 2551 B-mode abdominal US images obtained between 2014 and 2018). Performance of the networks was analyzed on a test set of 48 additional patients ( = 155 B-mode abdominal US images obtained in 2019) and compared with the performance of three caregivers (one nonexpert and two experts) blinded to the clinical history.

Hepatic Production of Fibroblast Growth Factor 23 in Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease.

Context: The bone-derived hormone fibroblast growth factor (FGF) 23 controls phosphate homeostasis and urinary phosphate excretion. FGF23 plasma levels increase in the early stage of renal insufficiency to prevent hyperphosphatemia. Recent evidence suggests that this increase has effects on cardiac and immune cells that compromise patients' health.

Contrast enhanced ultrasound by real-time spatiotemporal filtering of ultrafast images.

Contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) takes advantage of the nonlinear behaviour of injected microbubbles. If these contrast techniques yield good specificity between bubbles and tissues, they suffer some drawbacks, inherently linked to their dependence on nonlinear content. In recent years, plane-wave ultrasound reached frame rates of up to 20 000 fps.

Use of computed tomography assessed kidney length to predict split renal GFR in living kidney donors.

Objectives: Screening of living kidney donors may require scintigraphy to split glomerular filtration rate (GFR). To determine the usefulness of computed tomography (CT) to split GFR, we compared scintigraphy-split GFR to CT-split GFR. We evaluated CT-split GFR as a screening test to detect scintigraphy-split GFR lower than 40 mL/min/1.

Association of mGFR of the Remaining Kidney Divided by Its Volume before Donation with Functional Gain in mGFR among Living Kidney Donors.

Background And Objectives: The predictors of long-term renal function in living kidney donors are currently discussed. Our objectives were to describe the predictors of functional gain of the remaining kidney after kidney donation. We hypothesized that GFR of the remaining kidney divided by volume of this kidney (rk-GFR/vol) would reflect the density of functional nephrons and be inversely associated with functional gain of the remaining kidney.

Prostate cancer: diagnostic performance of real-time shear-wave elastography.

Purpose: To prospectively evaluate the performance of real-time ultrasonographic (US) shear-wave elastography (SWE) in the diagnosis of peripheral zone prostate cancer in patients with high and/or increasing prostate-specific antigen levels and/or abnormal digital rectal examination results.

Materials And Methods: After signing an informed consent form, men referred for transrectal prostate biopsy were enrolled in this prospective HIPAA-compliant two-center study, which was conducted with institutional review board approval. Transrectal US SWE of the prostate was performed after a conventional transrectal US examination and immediately before US-guided 12-core sextant biopsy.