Publications by authors named "Maria Clara Fernandes"

Objective: To compare abbreviated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to complete MRI for treatment response assessment of colorectal liver metastases.

Material And Methods: This retrospective study included consecutive patients with colorectal liver metastases between January 1, 2012, and December 3, 2021, who were undergoing chemotherapy and who had at least one follow-up gadoxetic-enhanced MRI. For each patient, two MRIs (baseline MRI and follow-up MRI) were randomly selected.

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Background: To evaluate the effectiveness of a deep learning denoising approach to accelerate diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and thus improve diagnostic accuracy and image quality in restaging rectal MRI following total neoadjuvant therapy (TNT).

Methods: This retrospective single-center study included patients with locally advanced rectal cancer who underwent restaging rectal MRI between December 30, 2021, and June 1, 2022, following TNT. A convolutional neural network trained with DWI data was employed to denoise accelerated DWI acquisitions (i.

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Rectal cancer management has evolved over the past decade with the emergence of total neoadjuvant therapy (TNT). For select patients who achieve a clinical complete response following TNT, organ preservation by means of the watch-and-wait (WW) strategy is an increasingly adopted alternative that preserves rectal function and quality of life without compromising oncologic outcomes. Recently, published 5-year results from the OPRA trial demonstrated that organ preservation can be achieved in approximately half of patients managed with the WW strategy, with most local regrowth events occurring within two years.

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Accurate imaging is key for the diagnosis and treatment of esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancers . Current imaging modalities, such as computed tomography (CT) and 18F-FDG (2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose) positron emission tomography (PET)/CT, have limitations in accurately staging these cancers. MRI shows promise for T staging and residual disease assessment.

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Purpose: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in the 6-month interval post chemoradiation therapy (CRT) in determining persistent disease and whether persistent diffusion restriction on DWI at 6 months is associated with overall survival; and secondarily, to investigate the accuracy of pelvic lymph node assessment on T2-weighted imaging and DWI in the 6-month interval post CRT, in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anus.

Methods And Materials: This retrospective study included patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anus who underwent CRT followed by restaging rectal MRI from January 2010 to April 2020, with ≥1 year of follow-up after CRT. DW images were qualitatively evaluated by 2 junior and 2 senior abdominal radiologists to determine anal persistent disease.

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Article Synopsis
  • Rectal cancer poses significant challenges in diagnosis and treatment, with neoadjuvant therapy improving chances of successful surgery and patient outcomes.
  • MRI is essential in evaluating how well patients respond to treatment, but distinguishing between viable tumors and changes caused by therapy is complicated.
  • This review examines treatment approaches based on resectability and emphasizes the importance of MRI for guiding decisions, highlighting advanced techniques like radiomics and offering management recommendations post-neoadjuvant therapy.
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Given the frequent co-existence of an aggressive tumor and underlying chronic liver disease, the management of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients requires experienced multidisciplinary team discussion. Moreover, imaging plays a key role in the diagnosis, staging, restaging, and surveillance of HCC. Currently, imaging assessment of HCC entails the assessment of qualitative characteristics which are prone to inter-reader variability.

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Background: Immune checkpoint blockade (ICI) of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) or PD-1 ligand (PD-L1) can induce durable responses in patients who have colorectal cancer (CRC) with a high tumor mutational burden (TMB). Two recurring clinical dilemmas show how to manage oligoprogressive disease and stable disease after ICI.

Methods: A cohort study was conducted to analyze patients with metastatic CRC who underwent PD-1 or PD-L1 blockade.

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Purpose: To evaluate an MRI-based radiomic texture classifier alone and combined with radiologist qualitative assessment in predicting pathological complete response (pCR) using restaging MRI with internal training and external validation.

Methods: Consecutive patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) who underwent neoadjuvant therapy followed by total mesorectal excision from March 2012 to February 2016 (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center/internal dataset, n = 114, 41% female, median age = 55) and July 2014 to October 2015 (Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo/external dataset, n = 50, 52% female, median age = 64.5) were retrospectively included.

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A 60-year-old woman presented with intermittent abdominal pain, an elevated serum CA-125 level, and an abnormal CT examination and was ultimately diagnosed with advanced-stage high-grade serous ovarian cancer. Key tumor locations on CT scans that should be highlighted by the radiologist to guide treatment selection are discussed.

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Purpose: To evaluate the frequency and clinical outcome of unknown extracolonic findings in patients with cancer who underwent CT colonography (CTC).

Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent CTC from February 2000-April 2016 for any indication were retrospectively included. One radiologist blinded to clinical data determined C-RADS classification for all extracolonic findings on CTC reports as follows: E1: normal examination or anatomic variant, E2: clinically unimportant, E3: likely unimportant, incompletely characterized, and E4: potentially important.

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Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has gained increasing importance in the management of rectal cancer over the last two decades. The role of MRI in patients with rectal cancer has expanded beyond the tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) system in both staging and restaging scenarios and has contributed to identifying "high" and "low" risk features that can be used to tailor and personalize patient treatment; for instance, selecting the patients for neoadjuvant chemoradiation (NCRT) before the total mesorectal excision (TME) surgery based on risk of recurrence. Among those features, the status of the circumferential resection margin (CRM), extramural vascular invasion (EMVI), and tumor deposits (TD) have stood out.

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There has been an increasing role of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the management of prostate cancer. MRI already plays an essential role in the detection and staging, with the introduction of functional MRI sequences. Recent advancements in radiomics and artificial intelligence are being tested to potentially improve detection, assessment of aggressiveness, and provide usefulness as a prognostic marker.

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We report a case of a 47-year-old woman with a history of acral lentiginous melanoma, left great toe subungual primary, metastatic to the lungs, brain, and spleen, presenting with lower urinary tract symptoms. She had also palpated and removed a dark mass from her vaginal canal. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed polypoidal lesions within the urinary bladder and the endometrium.

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Radiomics using rectal MRI radiomics has emerged as a promising approach in predicting pathological complete response. In this study, we present a typical pipeline of a radiomics analysis and review recent studies, exploring applications, development of radiomics methodologies and model construction in pCR prediction. Finally, we will offer our opinion about the future and discuss the next steps of rectal MRI radiomics for predicting pCR.

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Objective: To investigate associations between genetic mutations and qualitative as well as quantitative features on MRI in rectal adenocarcinoma at primary staging.

Methods: In this retrospective study, patients with rectal adenocarcinoma, genome sequencing, and pretreatment rectal MRI were included. Statistical analysis was performed to evaluate associations between qualitative features obtained from subjective evaluation of rectal MRI and gene mutations as well as between quantitative textural features and gene mutations.

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