Lesion-conditioning of synthetic MRI-derived subtraction-MIPs of the breast using a latent diffusion model.

The purpose of this feasibility study is to investigate if latent diffusion models (LDMs) are capable to generate contrast enhanced (CE) MRI-derived subtraction maximum intensity projections (MIPs) of the breast, which are conditioned by lesions. We trained an LDM with n = 2832 CE-MIPs of breast MRI examinations of n = 1966 patients (median age: 50 years) acquired between the years 2015 and 2020. The LDM was subsequently conditioned with n = 756 segmented lesions from n = 407 examinations, indicating their location and BI-RADS scores.

Variation in cartilage T2 and T2* mapping of the wrist: a comparison between 3- and 7-T MRI.

Background: To analyze regional variations in T2 and T2* relaxation times in wrist joint cartilage and the triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC) at 3 and 7 T and to compare values between field strengths.

Methods: Twenty-five healthy controls and 25 patients with chronic wrist pain were examined at 3 and 7 T on the same day using T2- and T2*-weighted sequences. Six different regions of interest (ROIs) were evaluated for cartilage and 3 ROIs were evaluated at the TFCC based on manual segmentation.

Prevalence and influencing factors for artifact development in breast MRI-derived maximum intensity projections.

Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides high diagnostic sensitivity for breast cancer. However, MRI artifacts may impede the diagnostic assessment. This is particularly important when evaluating maximum intensity projections (MIPs), such as in abbreviated MRI (AB-MRI) protocols, because high image quality is desired as a result of fewer sequences being available to compensate for problems.

Clinical Application of Ultrahigh-Field-Strength Wrist MRI: A Multireader 3-T and 7-T Comparison Study.

Background Ultrahigh-field-strength MRI at 7 T may permit superior visualization of noninflammatory wrist pathologic conditions, particularly due to its high signal-to-noise ratio compared with the clinical standard of 3 T, but direct comparison studies are lacking. Purpose To compare the subjective image quality of 3-T and 7-T ultrahigh-field-strength wrist MRI through semiquantitative scoring of multiple joint tissues in a multireader study. Materials and Methods In this prospective study, healthy controls and participants with chronic wrist pain underwent 3-T and 7-T MRI (coronal T1-weighted turbo spin-echo [TSE], coronal fat-suppressed proton-density [PD]-weighted TSE, transversal T2-weighted TSE) on the same day, from July 2018 to June 2019.

Digitized and structured informed patient consent before contrast-enhanced computed tomography: feasibility and benefits in clinical routine.

Background: To evaluate the feasibility and benefits of digitized informed patient consent (D-IPC) for contrast-enhanced CT and compare digitized documentation with paper-based, conventional patient records (C-PR).

Methods: We offered D-IPC to 2016 patients scheduled for a CT. We assessed patient history (e.

Detection of Microcalcifications in Spiral Breast Computed Tomography with Photon-Counting Detector Is Feasible: A Specimen Study.

The primary objective of the study was to compare a spiral breast computed tomography system (SBCT) to digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) for the detection of microcalcifications (MCs) in breast specimens. The secondary objective was to compare various reconstruction modes in SBCT. In total, 54 breast biopsy specimens were examined with mammography as a standard reference, with DBT, and with a dedicated SBCT containing a photon-counting detector.

Cigarette Excise Taxes in Context: Cautionary Lessons from the U.S. Experience.

Cigarette excise taxes are an important tool in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control strategy for reducing global tobacco consumption. However, contemporary tobacco control efforts also coincide with the proliferation of neoliberal economic programs calling for the withdrawal of state activity from the economy to facilitate trade. In this environment, cigarette excise taxes may be seen less as an instrument of tobacco control than a feature of an economic program that is punitive to lower-income people.

Reigniting tobacco ritual: waterpipe tobacco smoking establishment culture in the United States.

Introduction: Waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS) is an increasingly prevalent form of tobacco use in the United States. Its appeal may stem from its social, ritualistic, and aesthetic nature. Our aim in this study was to understand WTS as a social ritual with the goal of informing prevention efforts.

Editorial input for the right price: tobacco industry support for a sheet metal indoor air quality manual.

Following legal action in the 1990s, internal tobacco industry documents became public, allowing unprecedented insight into the industry's relationships with outside organizations. During the 1980s and 1990s, the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI), established by the Sheet Metal Workers International Association and the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors' National Association, (SMACNA) received tobacco industry funding to establish an indoor air quality services program. But the arrangement also required NEMI to serve as an advocate for industry efforts to defeat indoor smoking bans by arguing that ventilation was a more appropriate solution to environmental tobacco smoke.

Grassroots movement building and preemption in the campaign for residential fire sprinklers.

Home fires account for 85% of fire deaths in the United States, the majority in 1- or 2-family homes lacking fire sprinklers. Since 1978, however, a grassroots movement has successfully promoted more than 360 local ordinances mandating sprinklers in all new residential construction, including 1- and 2-family homes. The homebuilding industry has responded by seeking state preemption of local authority, a strategy previously used by other industries concerned about protecting their profits.

Manufacturing credibility: the National Energy Management Institute and the Tobacco Institute's strategy for indoor air quality.

Objectives: We studied tobacco industry efforts during the 1980s and 1990s to promote the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI), a nonprofit organization, as an authority on indoor air quality as part of the industry's strategy to oppose smoke-free worksite policies.

Methods: We analyzed tobacco industry documents, conducted literature searches in Lexis-Nexis for background and historical literature, and reviewed relevant public health and policy literature.

Results: The tobacco industry provided more than US $6 million to NEMI to establish it as an authority on indoor air quality and to work with it to undermine support for smoke-free air policies by promoting ventilation as a solution to indoor air quality problems.

Union women, the tobacco industry, and excise taxes: a lesson in unintended consequences.

Between 1987 and 1997, the tobacco industry used the issue of cigarette excise tax increases to create a political partnership with the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), a group representing female trade unionists in the U.S. This paper documents how the industry created this relationship and the lessons tobacco-control advocates can learn from the industry's example, in order to mitigate possible unintended consequences of advocating excise tax increases.

Unhealthy partnerships: the tobacco industry and African American and Latino labor organizations.

The tobacco industry in the 1980s began to form relationships with outside groups for assistance on key policy issues due to its own poor credibility in the policy arena. This strategy allowed the industry to advance its own interests while seeming to match the agendas of very different organizations. Between 1988 and 1998, the tobacco industry developed coalitions with the A.

Building alliances in unlikely places: progressive allies and the Tobacco Institute's coalition strategy on cigarette excise taxes.

The tobacco industry often utilizes third parties to advance its policy agenda. One such utilization occurred when the industry identified organized labor and progressive groups as potential allies whose advocacy could undermine public support for excise tax increases. To attract such collaboration, the industry framed the issue as one of tax fairness, creating a labor management committee to provide distance from tobacco companies and furthering progressive allies' interests through financial and logistical support.

Mobilising public opinion for the tobacco industry: the Consumer Tax Alliance and excise taxes.

Background: Tobacco industry funding was instrumental in creating and financing the Consumer Tax Alliance in 1989 as an organisation that relied upon extensive media outreach to build opposition to excise taxes as a regressive form of taxation. By obscuring its own role in this effort, the tobacco industry undermined the public's reasonable expectations for transparency in the policy-making process.

Aim: To examine the formation and activities of the Consumer Tax Alliance as a "hybrid" form of interest group in order to provide tobacco control and public health advocates with a better understanding of unanticipated tobacco industry coalitions and facilitate appropriate countermeasures.

Clearing the air: the evolution of organized labor's role in tobacco control in the United States.

As efforts to make U.S. worksites smoke-free took shape in the 1980s, the tobacco industry sought to defeat them by forming alliances with organized labor.

Political coalitions and working women: how the tobacco industry built a relationship with the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

Objectives: To assess how the tobacco industry established a political relationship with the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and to learn from this example how tobacco control advocates can work more effectively with organisations with which working class women are affiliated.

Methods: The study reviewed tobacco industry documents to determine Tobacco Institute strategy, using the CLUW News and other published material to corroborate our findings.

Results: The Tobacco Institute was effective at framing excise tax and smokefree worksite issues in a way that facilitated CLUW's support of industry positions on these issues.

A decade of work on organized labor and tobacco control: reflections on research and coalition building in the United States.

Labor unions can and should make strong allies in tobacco control efforts. Through much of the 1980s and 1990s, however, the organized labor and tobacco control communities rarely formed coalitions to achieve mutual gains. Recently, labor unions and tobacco control organizations have begun to work together on smoking cessation programs, smoke-free worksite policies, and increased insurance coverage for cessation treatments.

Labor and the tobacco institute's labor management committee in new york state: the rise and fall of a political coalition.

In 1984 the Tobacco Institute and the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers Union formed a Labor Management Committee. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, this LMC worked to elicit labor support in New York by framing issues in terms that made them salient to unions: tobacco excise taxes as regressive taxation, workplace smoking restrictions as an intrusion into collective bargaining. By the late 1990s, however, most of labor in New York had shifted to support for anti-tobacco policies.

How the health belief model helps the tobacco industry: individuals, choice, and "information".

Objective: To analyse trial and deposition testimony of tobacco industry executives to determine how they use the concepts of "information" and "choice" and consider how these concepts are related to theoretical models of health behaviour change.

Methods: We coded and analysed transcripts of trial and deposition testimony of 14 high-level executives representing six companies plus the Tobacco Institute. We conducted an interpretive analysis of industry executives' characterisation of the industry's role as information provider and the agency of tobacco consumers in making "choices".

From strange bedfellows to natural allies: the shifting allegiance of fire service organisations in the push for federal fire-safe cigarette legislation.

Background: Cigarettes are the leading cause of fatal fires in the USA and are associated with one in four fire deaths. Although the technology needed to make fire-safe cigarettes has been available for many years, progress has been slow on legislative and regulatory fronts to require the tobacco industry to manufacture fire-safe cigarettes.

Method And Results: We conducted a case study, drawing on data from tobacco industry documents, archives, and key informant interviews to investigate tobacco industry strategies for thwarting fire-safe cigarette legislation in the US Congress.

Political coalitions for mutual advantage: the case of the Tobacco Institute's Labor Management Committee.

In 1984, the tobacco workers' union and the Tobacco Institute, which represents US tobacco companies, formed a labor management committee (LMC). The institute relied on LMC unions to resist smoke-free worksite rules. In a review of the internal tobacco industry documents now publicly available, we found that the LMC succeeded for 2 primary reasons.