Feasibility of Percutaneous Radiofrequency Ablation for Abdominal Wall Endometriosis: A Prospective Pilot Study.

Study Objective: To assess the feasibility of percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (PRFA) of anterior abdominal wall endometriosis (AWE) lesions and to describe its efficacy on clinical symptoms and on the volume of the lesion.

Design: Interventional, prospective, noncomparative, phase 1 clinical trial.

Setting: Patients consulting at the multidisciplinary endometriosis expert center at Croix Rousse University Hospital (Hospices Civils de Lyon).

Incidental pulmonary nodules: Natural language processing analysis of radiology reports.

Background: Pulmonary nodules are a common incidental finding on chest Computed Tomography scans (CT), most of the time outside of lung cancer screening (LCS). We aimed to evaluate the number of incidental pulmonary nodules (IPN) found in 1 year in our hospital, as well as the follow-up (FUP) rate and the clinical and radiological features associated with FUP.

Methods: We trained a Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool to identify the transcripts mentioning the presence of a pulmonary nodule, among a large population of patients from a French hospital.

Weakly-supervised learning-based pathology detection and localization in 3D chest CT scans.

Background: Recent advancements in anomaly detection have paved the way for novel radiological reading assistance tools that support the identification of findings, aimed at saving time. The clinical adoption of such applications requires a low rate of false positives while maintaining high sensitivity.

Purpose: In light of recent interest and development in multi pathology identification, we present a novel method, based on a recent contrastive self-supervised approach, for multiple chest-related abnormality identification including low lung density area ("LLDA"), consolidation ("CONS"), nodules ("NOD") and interstitial pattern ("IP").

Association Between Aortic Wall Thrombus and Thromboembolic Events After Transfemoral Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement.

Background: Thromboembolic events, particularly strokes, remain a major complication of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). Embolic protection devices have failed to show significant clinical benefit in large randomized clinical trials. Aortic wall thrombus (AWT) is often observed on multidetector computed tomography during TAVR work-up, but its prognostic significance is uncertain.

Clinical Applications of Photon-counting CT: A Review of Pioneer Studies and a Glimpse into the Future.

CT systems equipped with photon-counting detectors (PCDs), referred to as photon-counting CT (PCCT), are beginning to change imaging in several subspecialties, such as cardiac, vascular, thoracic, and musculoskeletal radiology. Evidence has been building in the literature underpinning the many advantages of PCCT for different clinical applications. These benefits derive from the distinct features of PCDs, which are made of semiconductor materials capable of converting photons directly into electric signal.

Silent myocardial infarction fatty scars detected by coronary calcium score CT scan in diabetic patients without history of coronary heart disease.

Objectives: To evaluate the prevalence of intra-myocardial fatty scars (IMFS) most likely indicating previous silent myocardial infarction (SMI), as detected on coronary artery calcium (CAC) computed tomography (CT) scans in diabetic patients without history of coronary heart disease (CHD).

Methods: Diabetic patients screened for silent coronary insufficiency in a tertiary-care, university hospital between Jan-2015 and Dec-2016 were categorized according to their CAC score in two groups comprising 242 patients with CACS = 0 and 145 patients with CACS ≥ 300. CAC-CT scans were retrospectively evaluated for subendorcardial and transmural IMFS of the left ventricle.

Value of Chest X-Ray and Chest Computed Tomography for Systemic Sarcoidosis Diagnosis in Undifferentiated Uveitis.

Background: To evaluate the contribution of chest X-ray and chest CT for the diagnosis of sarcoid uveitis.

Methods: Retrospective study on consecutive patients with uveitis of unknown etiology, who underwent both chest X-ray and CT during uveitis diagnosis workup in a tertiary French university hospital.

Results: A total of 914 patients were included.

Gadolinium K-edge angiography with a spectral photon counting CT in atherosclerotic rabbits.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of gadolinium-K-edge-angiography (angio-Gd-K-edge) with gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) as obtained with spectral photon counting CT (SPCCT) in atherosclerotic rabbits.

Materials And Methods: Seven atherosclerotic rabbits underwent angio-SPCCT acquisitions with two GBCAs, with similar intravenous injection protocol. Conventional and angio-Gd-K-edge images were reconstructed with the same parameters.

BERT-based natural language processing analysis of French CT reports: Application to the measurement of the positivity rate for pulmonary embolism.

Rationale And Objectives: To develop a Natural Language Processing (NLP) method based on Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) adapted to French CT reports and to evaluate its performance to calculate the diagnostic yield of CT in patients with clinical suspicion of pulmonary embolism (PE).

Materials And Methods: All the CT reports performed in our institution in 2019 (99,510 reports, training and validation dataset) and 2018 (94,559 reports, testing dataset) were included after anonymization. Two BERT-based NLP sentence classifiers were trained on 27.

Virtual monochromatic images for coronary artery imaging with a spectral photon-counting CT in comparison to dual-layer CT systems: a phantom and a preliminary human study.

Objectives: To evaluate the quality of virtual monochromatic images (VMIs) from spectral photon-counting CT (SPCCT) and two energy-integrating detector dual-energy CT (EID-DECT) scanners from the same manufacturer, for the coronary lumen.

Methods: A 21-cm section of the Mercury v4.0 phantom was scanned using a cardiac CT protocol.

Artificial Intelligence as a Decision-Making Tool in Forensic Dentistry: A Pilot Study with I3M.

Expert determination of the third molar maturity index (I3M) constitutes one of the most common approaches for dental age estimation. This work aimed to investigate the technical feasibility of creating a decision-making tool based on I3M to support expert decision-making. Methods: The dataset consisted of 456 images from France and Uganda.

Lung Dual-Energy CT Perfusion Blood Volume as a Marker of Severity in Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension.

In chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH), assessment of severity requires right heart catheterization (RHC) through cardiac index (CI). Previous studies have shown that dual-energy CT allows a quantitative assessment of the lung perfusion blood volume (PBV). Therefore, the objective was to evaluate the quantitative PBV as a marker of severity in CTEPH.

First Experience With a Whole-Body Spectral Photon-Counting CT Clinical Prototype.

Spectral photon-counting computed tomography (SPCCT) technology holds great promise for becoming the next generation of computed tomography (CT) systems. Its technical characteristics have many advantages over conventional CT imaging. For example, SPCCT provides better spatial resolution, greater dose efficiency for ultra-low-dose and low-dose protocols, and tissue contrast superior to that of conventional CT.

Precision of CT-derived alveolar recruitment assessed by human observers and a machine learning algorithm in moderate and severe ARDS.

Background: Assessing measurement error in alveolar recruitment on computed tomography (CT) is of paramount importance to select a reliable threshold identifying patients with high potential for alveolar recruitment and to rationalize positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) setting in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The aim of this study was to assess both intra- and inter-observer smallest real difference (SRD) exceeding measurement error of recruitment using both human and machine learning-made lung segmentation (i.e.

High-resolution synchrotron K-edge subtraction CT allows tracking and quantifying therapeutic cells and their scaffold in a rat model of focal cerebral injury and can serve as a reference for spectral photon counting CT.

The objective of this study was to demonstrate that synchrotron K-edge subtraction tomography (SKES-CT) can simultaneously track therapeutic cells and their encapsulating carrier, in a rat model of focal brain injury using a dual-contrast agent approach. The second objective was to determine if SKES-CT could be used as a reference method for spectral photon counting tomography (SPCCT). Phantoms containing different concentrations of gold and iodine nanoparticles (AuNPS/INPs) were imaged with SKES-CT and SPCCT to assess their performances.

Bicolor K-edge spectral photon-counting CT imaging for the diagnosis of thoracic endoleaks: A dynamic phantom study.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of identifying and characterizing the three most common types of endoleaks within a thoracic aorta aneurysm model using bicolor K-edge imaging with a spectral photon-counting computing tomography (SPCCT) system in combination with a biphasic contrast agent injection.

Materials And Methods: Three types of thoracic endoleaks (type 1, 2 and 3) were created in a dynamic anthropomorphic thoracic aorta phantom. Protocol consisted in an injection of an iodinated contrast material followed 80 seconds after an injection of a gadolinium-based contrast agent (GBCA).

Effect of contrast material injection protocol on first-pass myocardial perfusion assessed by dual-energy dual-layer computed tomography.

Background: Dual-energy dual-layer computed tomography (CT) scanners can provide useful tools, such as iodine maps and virtual monochromatic images (VMI), for the evaluation of myocardial perfusion defects. Data about the influence of acquisition protocols and normal values are still lacking.

Methods: Clinically indicated coronary CT-angiographies performed between January-October 2018 in a single university hospital with dual-energy dual-layer CT (DE-DLCT) and different injection protocols were retrospectively evaluated.

Response to PEEP in COVID-19 ARDS patients with and without extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. A multicenter case-control computed tomography study.

Background: PEEP selection in severe COVID-19 patients under extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is challenging as no study has assessed the alveolar recruitability in this setting. The aim of the study was to compare lung recruitability and the impact of PEEP on lung aeration in moderate and severe ARDS patients with or without ECMO, using computed tomography (CT).

Methods: We conducted a two-center prospective observational case-control study in adult COVID-19-related patients who had an indication for CT within 72 h of ARDS onset in non-ECMO patients or within 72  h after ECMO onset.

French Imaging Database Against Coronavirus (FIDAC): A large COVID-19 multi-center chest CT database.

Purpose: During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the French Society of Radiology and the French College of Radiology, in partnership with NEHS Digital, have set up a system to collect chest computed tomography (CT) examinations with clinical, virological and radiological metadata, from patients clinically suspected of COVID-19 pneumonia. This allowed the constitution of an anonymized multicenter database, named FIDAC (French Imaging Database Against Coronavirus). The aim of this report was to describe the content of this public database.