Coronary artery segmentation under class imbalance using a U-Net based architecture on computed tomography angiography images.

Coronary artery disease is caused primarily by vessel narrowing. Extraction of the coronary artery area from images is the preferred procedure for diagnosing coronary diseases. In this study, a U-Net-based network architecture, 3D Dense-U-Net, was adopted to perform fully automatic segmentation of the coronary artery.

Characterization and management of various renal cystic lesions by sonographic features.

Renal cysts are common incidental findings in clinical practice. Most renal cysts detected in medical imaging are benign simple cysts. However, some are complicated by hemorrhage or infection or are associated with calcification.

Large-volume iodinated contrast medium extravasation: low frequency and good outcome after conservative management in a single-centre cohort of more than 67,000 patients.

Objectives: Our aim was to retrospectively investigate the frequency and outcome of large-volume iodinated contrast medium (CM) extravasation in our institution and to compare our management protocol to current practice.

Methods: Institutional review board approval was obtained, and informed consent was waived because the study was retrospective. From January 2008 to September 2016, radiological examinations with intravenous non-ionic iodinated CM administration were performed in 67,129 patients.

Assessment of radiation safety in cardiac CT angiography.

This study investigates the radiation dose and image quality of patients not receiving β-blockers for cardiac CT angiography (CCTA) with or without the optimization of electrocardiographic (ECG) pulsing window. The differences in patient characteristics are also characterized.Normal-weight and obese patients (n = 154) with heart rates between 65 and 80 beats per minutes (bpm) during the prospective axial scanning were enrolled retrospectively.

The proper use of coronary calcium score and coronary computed tomography angiography for screening asymptomatic patients with cardiovascular risk factors.

Early detection and treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD) can reduce incidences of acute myocardial infarction. In this study, we determined the proper use of contributing risk factors and coronary artery calcium score (CACS) when screening asymptomatic patients with coronary arterial stenoses using coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA). We reviewed 934 consecutive patients who received CACS and CCTA between December 2013 and November 2016.

Sonographic criteria predictive of benign thyroid nodules useful in avoiding unnecessary ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration.

Background/purpose: There has been no individual ultrasound feature of having high accuracy for diagnosis of thyroid malignancy. In this study, we aimed to establish feature-oriented criteria to characterize benign thyroid nodules that do not require ultrasound (US)-guided fine needle aspiration (FNA).

Methods: We reviewed 374 patients with thyroid nodules who had undergone US-guided FNA at our institution (2005-2008).