Correction: Weingart et al. Expanded Polycarbonate (EPC)-A New Generation of High-Temperature Engineering Bead Foams. 2020, , 2314.

In the original publication [...

Insights into the Bead Fusion Mechanism of Expanded Polybutylene Terephthalate (E-PBT).

Expandable polystyrene (EPS) and expanded polypropylene (EPP) dominate the bead foam market. As the low thermal performance of EPS and EPP limits application at elevated temperatures novel solutions such as expanded polybutylene terephthalate (E-PBT) are gaining importance. To produce parts, individual beads are typically molded by hot steam.

The International Radiomics Platform - An Initiative of the German and Austrian Radiological Societies - First Application Examples.

Purpose:  The DRG-ÖRG IRP (Deutsche Röntgengesellschaft-Österreichische Röntgengesellschaft international radiomics platform) represents a web-/cloud-based radiomics platform based on a public-private partnership. It offers the possibility of data sharing, annotation, validation and certification in the field of artificial intelligence, radiomics analysis, and integrated diagnostics. In a first proof-of-concept study, automated myocardial segmentation and automated myocardial late gadolinum enhancement (LGE) detection using radiomic image features will be evaluated for myocarditis data sets.

Expanded Polycarbonate (EPC)-A New Generation of High-Temperature Engineering Bead Foams.

Bead foams serve in a wide variety of applications, from insulation and packaging to midsoles in shoes. However, the currently used materials are limited to somewhat low temperature or exhibit significant changes in modulus in the temperature range of many applications due to their glass transition. By comparison, polycarbonate (PC) exhibits almost constant mechanics for temperatures up to 130 °C.

Quantitative CT analysis in patients with pulmonary emphysema: is lung function influenced by concomitant unspecific pulmonary fibrosis?

Purpose: Quantitative analysis of CT scans has proven to be a reproducible technique, which might help to understand the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema. The aim of this retrospective study was to find out if the lung function of patients with COPD with Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) stages III or IV and pulmonary emphysema is measurably influenced by high attenuation areas as a correlate of concomitant unspecific fibrotic changes of lung parenchyma.

Patients And Methods: Eighty-eight patients with COPD GOLD stage III or IV underwent CT and pulmonary function tests.

Lobe-wise assessment of lung volume and density distribution in lung transplant patients and value for early detection of bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome.

Purpose: To evaluate quantitative computed tomography (CT) measurements of the lung parenchyma in lung transplant (LTx) patients for early detection of the bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS).

Materials And Methods: 359 CT scans of 122 lung transplant patients were evaluated. Measurements of lung volume and density were performed for the whole lung and separately for each lobe.

Fast interactive segmentation of the pulmonary lobes from thoracic computed tomography data.

Automated lung lobe segmentation methods often fail for challenging and clinically relevant cases with incomplete fissures or substantial amounts of pathology. We present a fast and intuitive method to interactively correct a given lung lobe segmentation or to quickly create a lobe segmentation from scratch based on a lung mask. A given lobar boundary is converted into a mesh by principal component analysis of 3D lobar boundary markers to obtain a plane where nodes correspond to the position of the markers.

Computed tomography quantification of tracheal abnormalities in COPD and their influence on airflow limitation.

Purpose: To present a method to automatically quantify tracheal morphology changes during breathing and investigate its contribution to airflow impairment when adding CT measures of emphysema, airway wall thickness, air trapping and ventilation.

Methods: Because tracheal abnormalities often occur localized, a method is presented that automatically determines the most abnormal trachea section based on automatically computed sagittal and coronal lengths. In this most abnormal section, trachea morphology is encoded using four equiangular rays from the center of the trachea and the normalized lengths of these rays are used as features in a classification scheme.

Follow-up of CT-derived airway wall thickness: Correcting for changes in inspiration level improves reliability.

Objectives: Airway wall thickness (AWT) is affected by changes in lung volume. This study evaluated whether correcting AWT on computed tomography (CT) for differences in inspiration level improves measurement agreement, reliability, and power to detect changes over time.

Methods: Participants of the Dutch-Belgian lung cancer screening trial who underwent 3-month repeat CT for an indeterminate pulmonary nodule were included.

Algorithm Variability in the Estimation of Lung Nodule Volume From Phantom CT Scans: Results of the QIBA 3A Public Challenge.

Rationale And Objectives: Quantifying changes in lung tumor volume is important for diagnosis, therapy planning, and evaluation of response to therapy. The aim of this study was to assess the performance of multiple algorithms on a reference data set. The study was organized by the Quantitative Imaging Biomarker Alliance (QIBA).

Inter-Method Performance Study of Tumor Volumetry Assessment on Computed Tomography Test-Retest Data.

Rationale And Objectives: Tumor volume change has potential as a biomarker for diagnosis, therapy planning, and treatment response. Precision was evaluated and compared among semiautomated lung tumor volume measurement algorithms from clinical thoracic computed tomography data sets. The results inform approaches and testing requirements for establishing conformance with the Quantitative Imaging Biomarker Alliance (QIBA) Computed Tomography Volumetry Profile.

Lung Volume Reduction in Pulmonary Emphysema from the Radiologist's Perspective.

Unlabelled: Pulmonary emphysema causes decrease in lung function due to irreversible dilatation of intrapulmonary air spaces, which is linked to high morbidity and mortality. Lung volume reduction (LVR) is an invasive therapeutical option for pulmonary emphysema in order to improve ventilation mechanics. LVR can be carried out by lung resection surgery or different minimally invasive endoscopical procedures.

Pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis: analysis of disease manifestation by region-based quantification of lung parenchyma.

Purpose: Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) is characterized by proliferation of smooth muscle tissue that causes bronchial obstruction and secondary cystic destruction of lung parenchyma. The aim of this study was to evaluate the typical distribution of cystic defects in LAM with quantitative volumetric chest computed tomography (CT).

Materials And Methods: CT examinations of 20 patients with confirmed LAM were evaluated with region-based quantification of lung parenchyma.

Robust semi-automatic segmentation of pulmonary subsolid nodules in chest computed tomography scans.

The malignancy of lung nodules is most often detected by analyzing changes of the nodule diameter in follow-up scans. A recent study showed that comparing the volume or the mass of a nodule over time is much more significant than comparing the diameter. Since the survival rate is higher when the disease is still in an early stage it is important to detect the growth rate as soon as possible.

Quantitative Emphysema Distribution in Anatomic and Non-anatomic Lung Regions.

Purpose: The change of emphysema distribution with increasing COPD severity is not yet assessed. Especially, involvement of the upper aspect of the lower lobe is unknown. The primary aim was to quantitatively determine regional distribution of emphysema in anatomically (lung lobes) and non-anatomically defined lung regions (upper/lower lung halves as well as core and rind regions) in a cohort covering equally all COPD severity stages using CT.

Automatic lung segmentation method for MRI-based lung perfusion studies of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Purpose: A novel fully automatic lung segmentation method for magnetic resonance (MR) images of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is presented. The main goal of this work was to ease the tedious and time-consuming task of manual lung segmentation, which is required for region-based volumetric analysis of four-dimensional MR perfusion studies which goes beyond the analysis of small regions of interest.

Methods: The first step in the automatic algorithm is the segmentation of the lungs in morphological MR images with higher spatial resolution than corresponding perfusion MR images.

Automatic detection of subsolid pulmonary nodules in thoracic computed tomography images.

Subsolid pulmonary nodules occur less often than solid pulmonary nodules, but show a much higher malignancy rate. Therefore, accurate detection of this type of pulmonary nodules is crucial. In this work, a computer-aided detection (CAD) system for subsolid nodules in computed tomography images is presented and evaluated on a large data set from a multi-center lung cancer screening trial.

Segmentation-based partial volume correction for volume estimation of solid lesions in CT.

In oncological chemotherapy monitoring, the change of a tumor's size is an important criterion for assessing cancer therapeutics. Measuring the volume of a tumor requires its delineation in 3-D. This is called segmentation, which is an intensively studied problem in medical image processing.

Computer-aided segmentation and volumetry of artificial ground-glass nodules at chest CT.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate a new software program for semiautomatic measurement of the volume and mass of ground-glass nodules (GGNs) in a chest phantom and to investigate the influence of CT scanner, reconstruction filter, tube voltage, and tube current.

Materials And Methods: We used an anthropomorphic chest phantom with eight artificial GGNs with two different CT attenuations and four different volumes. CT scans were obtained with four models of CT scanner at 120 kVp and 25 mAs with a soft and a sharp reconstruction filter.

CT-based weight assessment of lung lobes: comparison with ex vivo measurements.

Purpose: We aimed to evaluate the validity of lung lobe weight assessment via computed tomography (CT) by comparing CT-derived and ex vivo measurements.

Materials And Methods: Unenhanced CT scanning was performed in 30 consecutive patients before lobectomy for lung cancer. The CT images were analyzed using research software after allowing for lobar weight quantitation.

PET-based delineation of tumour volumes in lung cancer: comparison with pathological findings.

Purpose: The objective of the study was to validate an adaptive, contrast-oriented thresholding algorithm (COA) for tumour delineation in (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in comparison with pathological findings. The impact of tumour localization, tumour size and uptake heterogeneity on PET delineation results was also investigated.

Methods: PET tumour delineation by COA was compared with both CT delineation and pathological findings in 15 patients to investigate its validity.