Evaluation of artificial intelligence and optical image recognition techniques used in OneIso, an off-axis Winston-Lutz quality assurance phantom.

Single-isocenter multitarget (SIMT) stereotactic-radiosurgery (SRS) has recently emerged as a powerful treatment regimen for intracranial tumors. With high specificity, SIMT SRS allows for rapid, high-dose delivery while maintaining integrity of adjacent healthy tissues and minimizing neurocognitive damage to patients. Highly robust and accurate quality assurance (QA) tests are critical to minimize off-targets and damage to surrounding healthy tissues.

Parametric response mapping of co-registered intravoxel incoherent motion magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography in locally advanced cervical cancer undergoing concurrent chemoradiation therapy.

Background And Purpose: Intravoxel-incoherent-motion (IVIM) magnetic-resonance-imaging (MRI) and positron-emission-tomography (PET) have been investigated independently but not voxel-wise to evaluate tumor microenvironment in cervical carcinoma patients. Whether regionally combined information of IVIM and PET offers additional predictive benefit over each modality independently has not been explored. Here, we investigated parametric-response-mapping (PRM) of co-registered PET and IVIM in cervical cancer patients to identify sub-volumes that may predict tumor shrinkage to concurrent-chemoradiation-therapy (CCRT).

Prospective Intergenerational Associations between Parents' and Children's Illicit Substance Use During Adolescence.

Objective: Intergenerational studies have identified relations between adolescents' and their future offspring's cannabis and alcohol use, but rarely have examined the association for other illicit drug use. Given the low prevalence of such use in community populations, we pooled data from three prospective intergenerational studies to test this link.

Method: Participants were 1,060 children of 937 parents who had been repeatedly assessed since early adolescence.

Bidirectional Associations of Mental Health with Self-Reported Criminal Offending Over Time for At-Risk Early Adult Men in the USA.

Criminal offending and mental health problems often co-occur. This study examined competing models to understand bidirectional associations between crime and mental health problems over time among at-risk men in the U.S.

Phase-Resolved Functional Lung (PREFUL) MRI to Quantify Ventilation: Feasibility and Physiological Relevance in Severe Asthma.

Rationale And Objectives: Emergent evidence in several respiratory diseases supports translational potential for Phase-Resolved Functional Lung (PREFUL) MRI to spatially quantify ventilation but its feasibility and physiological relevance have not been demonstrated in patients with asthma. This study compares PREFUL-derived ventilation defect percent (VDP) in severe asthma patients to healthy controls and measures its responsiveness to bronchodilator therapy and relation to established measures of airways disease.

Materials And Methods: Forty-one adults with severe asthma and seven healthy controls performed same-day free-breathing H MRI, Xe MRI, spirometry, and oscillometry.

Youth Exposure to Recreational Cannabis Legalization: Moderation of Effects by Sex and Parental Cannabis Use during Adolescence.

Objective: Few studies of recreational cannabis legalization (RCL) have assessed adolescents both before and after RCL or considered moderators of RCL effects. The present study tested whether RCL was more strongly associated with cannabis use for girls and among youth whose parents had a history of cannabis use during adolescence.

Method: Data were pooled from 940 adolescents from three intergenerational studies that began in Washington (where RCL was enacted in 2012), Oregon (RCL year = 2015), and New York (RCL year = 2021).

Adverse radiation effect versus tumor progression following stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases: Implications of radiologic uncertainty.

Background: Adverse radiation effect (ARE) following stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for brain metastases is challenging to distinguish from tumor progression. This study characterizes the clinical implications of radiologic uncertainty (RU).

Methods: Cases reviewed retrospectively at a single-institutional, multi-disciplinary SRS Tumor Board between 2015-2022 for RU following SRS were identified.

Report of the European Medicines Agency Conference on RNA-Based Medicines.

RNA-based medicines have potential to treat a large variety of diseases, and research in the field is very dynamic. Proactively, The European Medicines Agency (EMA) organized a virtual conference on February 2, 2023 to promote the development of RNA-based medicines. The initiative addresses the goal of the EMA Regulatory Science Strategy to 2025 to "catalyse the integration of science and technology in medicines development.

Specific Ventilation in Severe Asthma Evaluated with Noncontrast Tidal Breathing H MRI.

Purpose To determine if proton (H) MRI-derived specific ventilation is responsive to bronchodilator (BD) therapy and associated with clinical biomarkers of type 2 airway inflammation and airways dysfunction in severe asthma. Materials and Methods In this prospective study, 27 participants with severe asthma (mean age, 52 years ± 9 [SD]; 17 female, 10 male) and seven healthy controls (mean age, 47 years ± 16; five female, two male), recruited between 2018 and 2021, underwent same-day spirometry, respiratory oscillometry, and tidal breathing H MRI. Participants with severe asthma underwent all assessments before and after BD therapy, and type 2 airway inflammatory biomarkers were determined (blood eosinophil count, sputum eosinophil percentage, sputum eosinophil-free granules, and fraction of exhaled nitric oxide) to generate a cumulative type 2 biomarker score.

A Couch Mounted Smartphone-based Motion Monitoring System for Radiation Therapy.

Purpose: Surface-guided radiation-therapy (SGRT) systems are being adopted into clinical practice for patient setup and motion monitoring. However, commercial systems remain cost prohibitive to resource-limited clinics around the world. Our aim is to develop and validate a smartphone-based application using LiDAR cameras (such as on recent Apple iOS devices) for facilitating SGRT in low-resource centers.

Tungsten Filled 3-Dimensional Printed Lung Blocks for Total Body Irradiation.

Purpose: Lung blocks for total-body irradiation are commonly used to reduce lung dose and prevent radiation pneumonitis. Currently, molten Cerrobend containing toxic materials, specifically lead and cadmium, is poured into molds to construct blocks. We propose a streamlined method to create 3-dimensional (3D)-printed lung block shells and fill them with tungsten ball bearings to remove lead and improve overall accuracy in the block manufacturing workflow.

The Co-Occurrence of Conduct Problems and Depressive Symptoms From Childhood to Adulthood for Men: Stability Over Time and Prediction to Substance Use.

The dual pathway hypothesis of risk for substance use was tested by examining risk from symptoms of conduct problems and depressive symptoms in adolescence (from ages 10-11 to 17-18 years) to substance use-including tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and other illicit drugs-in both early adulthood (approximately from ages 20 to 29 years) and middle adulthood (approximately from ages 29 to 38 years). Hypotheses were tested on a sample of boys who were at risk for conduct problems by virtue of the neighborhoods where they lived in childhood (the Oregon Youth Study; N = 206 at Wave 1). Dual-trajectory modeling (Latent Class Analysis) resulted in a 3-group solution of high, moderate, and low co-occurring symptoms.

Commentary: The roles of mothers versus fathers in intergenerational family risk - a commentary on Rothenberg et al. (2023).

Basic research studies in the past 2 decades have established that conduct problems and antisocial behavior are associated across generations within families. The Fast Track study represents a major prevention effort with children showing higher levels of conduct problems in childhood, and the Rothenberg et al. (Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2022) study sheds light on whether this intervention has beneficial effects on the family of procreation.

Effects of Cannabis Legalization on Adolescent Cannabis Use Across 3 Studies.

Introduction: Canada, Uruguay, and 18 states in the U.S. have legalized the use of nonmedical (recreational) cannabis for adults, yet the impact of legalization on adolescent cannabis use remains unclear.

Quantification of pulmonary functional MRI: state-of-the-art and emerging image processing methods and measurements.

Pulmonary functional magnetic resonance imaging (PfMRI) provides a way to non-invasively map and measure the spatial distribution of pulmonary ventilation, perfusion and gas-exchange abnormalities with unprecedented detail of functional processes at the level of airways, alveoli and the alveolar-capillary membrane. Current PfMRI approaches are dominated by hyperpolarized helium-3 (He) and xenon-129 (Xe) gases, which both provide rapid (8-15 s) and well-tolerated imaging examinations in patients with severe pulmonary diseases and pediatric populations, whilst employing no ionizing radiation. While a number of review papers summarize the required image acquisition hardware and software requirements needed to enable PfMRI, here we focus on the image analysis and processing methods required for reproducible measurements using hyperpolarized gas ventilation MRI.

A geometry-informed deep learning framework for ultra-sparse 3D tomographic image reconstruction.

Deep learning affords enormous opportunities to augment the armamentarium of biomedical imaging. However, the pure data-driven nature of deep learning models may limit the model generalizability and application scope. Here we establish a geometry-informed deep learning framework for ultra-sparse 3D tomographic image reconstruction.

Associations of Cannabis Use across Adolescence and Early Adulthood With Health and Psychosocial Adjustment in Early Adulthood and Midadulthood in Men.

Background: Associations between men's prior cannabis use and their physical and psychosocial adjustment were examined using prospective data across adolescence (ages 13-20 years), early adulthood (ages 20-30 years), and midadulthood (ages 30-38 years). The theoretical framework was based in developmental-contextual and lifespan approaches.

Method: Models were tested using men in the Oregon Youth Study who had been studied since ages 9 to 10 years and who, in childhood, lived in neighborhoods with higher than average rates of delinquency.

Treatment planning system commissioning of the first clinical biology-guided radiotherapy machine.

Purpose: The RefleXion X1 is a novel radiotherapy machine designed for image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) and biology-guided radiotherapy (BgRT). Its treatment planning system (TPS) generates IMRT and SBRT plans for a 6MV-FFF beam delivered axially via 50 firing positions with the couch advancing every 2.1 mm.

IMRT and SBRT Treatment Planning Study for the First Clinical Biology-Guided Radiotherapy System.

The first clinical biology-guided radiation therapy (BgRT) system-RefleXion X1-was installed and commissioned for clinical use at our institution. This study aimed at evaluating the treatment plan quality and delivery efficiency for IMRT/SBRT cases without PET guidance. A total of 42 patient plans across 6 cancer sites (conventionally fractionated lung, head, and neck, anus, prostate, brain, and lung SBRT) planned with the Eclipse treatment planning system (TPS) and treated with either a TrueBeam or Trilogy were selected for this retrospective study.

Functional Lung Avoidance for Individualized Radiation Therapy: Results of a Double-Masked, Randomized Controlled Trial.

Purpose: To determine whether functional lung avoidance based on He magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) improves quality of life (QOL) for patients undergoing concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) for advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

Methods And Materials: Patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer (or oligometastatic disease treated with curative intent) undergoing CCRT with at least a 10 pack-year smoking history were eligible. Patients underwent pretreatment He MRI to measure lung ventilation and had 2 radiation therapy (RT) plans created before randomization: a standard plan, which did not make use of the He MRI, and an avoidance plan, preferentially sparing well-ventilated lung.

Intergenerational Associations in Crime for an At-Risk Sample of US Men: Factors that May Mitigate or Exacerbate Transmission.

Purpose: To examine moderation of intergenerational transmission of crime and antisocial behavior of parents to adult arrests of sons (from age 18 years to ages 37-38 years). Moderators examined were from late childhood (constructive parenting and sons' inhibitory control, internalizing symptoms, and cognitive function), adolescence (delinquency and deviant peer association), and early adulthood (educational achievement, employment history, substance use, deviant peer association, and partner antisocial behavior).

Methods: Study participants were parents and sons ( = 206) from the longitudinal Oregon Youth Study, recruited from schools in the higher crime areas of a medium-sized metropolitan region in the Pacific Northwest.

Beam commissioning of the first clinical biology-guided radiotherapy system.

Unlabelled: This study reports the beam commissioning results for the first clinical RefleXion Linac.

Methods: The X1 produces a 6 MV photon beam and the maximum clinical field size is 40 × 2 cm at source-to-axis distance of 85 cm. Treatment fields are collimated by a binary multileaf collimator (MLC) system with 64 leaves with width of 0.

Assay, Purity, and Impurity Profile of Phosphorothioate Oligonucleotide Therapeutics by Ion Pair-HPLC-MS.

The relatively large molecular size, diastereoisomeric nature, and complex impurity profiles of therapeutic phosphorothioate oligonucleotides create significant analytical challenges for the quality control laboratory. To overcome the lack of selectivity inherent to traditional chromatographic approaches, an ion pair liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS) method combining ultraviolet and mass spectrometry quantification was developed and validated for >35 different oligonucleotide drug substances and products, including several commercialized drugs. The selection of chromatographic and spectrometric conditions, data acquisition and processing, critical aspects of sample and buffer preparation and instrument maintenance, and results from method validation experiments are discussed.

Acute and Late Esophageal Toxicity After SABR to Thoracic Tumors Near or Abutting the Esophagus.

Purpose: Our purpose was to evaluate the incidence of acute and late esophageal toxicity in patients with thoracic tumors near or abutting the esophagus treated with SABR.

Methods And Materials: Among patients with thoracic tumors treated with SABR, we identified those with tumors near or abutting the esophagus. Using the linear-quadratic model with an α/ß ratio of 10, we determined the correlation between dosimetric parameters and esophageal toxicity graded using the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events, version 5.