Publications by authors named "Thomas Weikert"

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, dementia, depression and cancers, are on the rise worldwide and are often associated with a lack of physical activity (PA). Globally, the levels of PA among individuals are below WHO recommendations. A lack of PA can increase morbidity and mortality, worsen the quality of life and increase the economic burden on individuals and society.

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Rationale And Objectives: Finding comparison to relevant prior studies is a requisite component of the radiology workflow. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a deep learning tool simplifying this time-consuming task by automatically identifying and displaying the finding in relevant prior studies.

Materials And Methods: The algorithm pipeline used in this retrospective study, TimeLens (TL), is based on natural language processing and descriptor-based image-matching algorithms.

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Objectives: High breast density is a well-known risk factor for breast cancer. This study aimed to develop and adapt two (MLO, CC) deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) for automatic breast density classification on synthetic 2D tomosynthesis reconstructions.

Methods: In total, 4605 synthetic 2D images (1665 patients, age: 57 ± 37 years) were labeled according to the ACR (American College of Radiology) density (A-D).

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study proposes a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm to automatically extract temporal referrals from unstructured radiology reports, enhancing readability and patient management by connecting current and past exams.
  • - A convolutional neural network was developed and tested on 149 reports, achieving high precision (0.93), recall (0.95), and F1-score (0.94) for extracting the dates of referrals from a decade's worth of reports.
  • - Out of 1.68 million analyzed reports, 53.3% included temporal references, while 21% explicitly stated they were unavailable and 25.7% omitted them. The study also introduced a graphical representation to visualize these connections among imaging reports.
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The European Society of Cardiovascular Radiology (ESCR) is the European specialist society of cardiac and vascular imaging. This society's highest priority is the continuous improvement, development, and standardization of education, training, and best medical practice, based on experience and evidence. The present intra-society consensus is based on the existing scientific evidence and on the individual experience of the members of the ESCR writing group on carotid diseases, the members of the ESCR guidelines committee, and the members of the executive committee of the ESCR.

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The European Society of Cardiovascular Radiology (ESCR) is the European specialist society of cardiac and vascular imaging. This society's highest priority is the continuous improvement, development, and standardization of education, training, and best medical practice, based on experience and evidence. The present intra-society consensus is based on the existing scientific evidence and on the individual experience of the members of the ESCR writing group on carotid diseases, the members of the ESCR guidelines committee, and the members of the executive committee of the ESCR.

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Purpose: Airway wall thickening is a consequence of chronic inflammatory processes and usually only qualitatively described in CT radiology reports. The purpose of this study is to automatically quantify airway wall thickness in multiple airway generations and assess the diagnostic potential of this parameter in a large cohort of patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

Materials And Methods: This retrospective, single-center study included a series of unenhanced chest CTs.

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Objective: This study trained and evaluated algorithms to detect, segment, and classify simple and complex pleural effusions on computed tomography (CT) scans.

Materials And Methods: For detection and segmentation, we randomly selected 160 chest CT scans out of all consecutive patients (January 2016-January 2021, n = 2659) with reported pleural effusion. Effusions were manually segmented and a negative cohort of chest CTs from 160 patients without effusions was added.

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Pericardial effusions (PEFs) are often missed on Computed Tomography (CT), which particularly affects the outcome of patients presenting with hemodynamic compromise. An automatic PEF detection, segmentation, and classification tool would expedite and improve CT based PEF diagnosis; 258 CTs with (206 with simple PEF, 52 with hemopericardium) and without PEF (each 134 with contrast, 124 non-enhanced) were identified using the radiology report (01/2016−01/2021). PEF were manually 3D-segmented.

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Authors implemented an artificial intelligence (AI)-based detection tool for intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) on noncontrast CT images into an emergent workflow, evaluated its diagnostic performance, and assessed clinical workflow metrics compared with pre-AI implementation. The finalized radiology report constituted the ground truth for the analysis, and CT examinations ( = 4450) before and after implementation were retrieved using various keywords for ICH. Diagnostic performance was assessed, and mean values with their respective 95% CIs were reported to compare workflow metrics (report turnaround time, communication time of a finding, consultation time of another specialty, and turnaround time in the emergency department).

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Purpose: To introduce a widely applicable workflow for pulmonary lobe segmentation of MR images using a recurrent neural network (RNN) trained with chest CT datasets. The feasibility is demonstrated for 2D coronal ultrafast balanced SSFP (ufSSFP) MRI.

Methods: Lung lobes of 250 publicly accessible CT datasets of adults were segmented with an open-source CT-specific algorithm.

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Purpose: It is known from histology studies that lung vessels are affected in viral pneumonia. However, their diagnostic potential as a chest CT imaging parameter has only rarely been exploited. The purpose of this study is to develop a robust method for automated lung vessel segmentation and morphology analysis and apply it to a large chest CT dataset.

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The reconstruction of complex midface defects is a challenging clinical scenario considering the high anatomical, functional, and aesthetic requirements. In this study, we proposed a surgical treatment to achieve improved oral rehabilitation and anatomical and functional reconstruction of a complex defect of the maxilla with a vascularized, engineered composite graft. The patient was a 39-year-old female, postoperative after left hemimaxillectomy for ameloblastic carcinoma in 2010 and tumor-free at the 5-year oncological follow-up.

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Background: Manually performed diameter measurements on ECG-gated CT-angiography (CTA) represent the gold standard for diagnosis of thoracic aortic dilatation. However, they are time-consuming and show high inter-reader variability. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the accuracy of measurements of a deep learning-(DL)-algorithm in comparison to those of radiologists and evaluated measurement times (MT).

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Objectives: Rapid communication of CT exams positive for pulmonary embolism (PE) is crucial for timely initiation of anticoagulation and patient outcome. It is unknown if deep learning automated detection of PE on CT Pulmonary Angiograms (CTPA) in combination with worklist prioritization and an electronic notification system (ENS) can improve communication times and patient turnaround in the Emergency Department (ED).

Methods: In 01/2019, an ENS allowing direct communication between radiology and ED was installed.

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Pancreatic cystic lesions (PCL) are a frequent and underreported incidental finding on CT scans and can transform into neoplasms with devastating consequences. We developed and evaluated an algorithm based on a two-step nnU-Net architecture for automated detection of PCL on CTs. A total of 543 cysts on 221 abdominal CTs were manually segmented in 3D by a radiology resident in consensus with a board-certified radiologist specialized in abdominal radiology.

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Purpose: To evaluate potential confounding factors in the quantitative assessment of liver fibrosis and cirrhosis using T1 relaxation times.

Methods: The study population is based on a radiology-information-system database search for abdominal MRI performed from July 2018 to April 2019 at our institution. After applying exclusion criteria 200 (59 ± 16 yrs) remaining patients were retrospectively included.

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CT patterns of viral pneumonia are usually only qualitatively described in radiology reports. Artificial intelligence enables automated and reliable segmentation of lungs with chest CT. Based on this, the purpose of this study was to derive meaningful imaging biomarkers reflecting CT patterns of viral pneumonia and assess their potential to discriminate between healthy lungs and lungs with viral pneumonia.

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Purpose: The purpose of this retrospective study was to correlate CT patterns of fatal cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with postmortem pathology observations.

Materials And Methods: The study included 70 lung lobes of 14 patients who died of reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction-confirmed COVID-19. All patients underwent antemortem CT and autopsy between March 9 and April 30, 2020.

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Objective: To extract pulmonary and cardiovascular metrics from chest CTs of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) using a fully automated deep learning-based approach and assess their potential to predict patient management.

Materials And Methods: All initial chest CTs of patients who tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 at our emergency department between March 25 and April 25, 2020, were identified (n = 120). Three patient management groups were defined: group 1 (outpatient), group 2 (general ward), and group 3 (intensive care unit [ICU]).

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To explore the feasibility of a fully automated workflow for whole-body volumetric analyses based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) and to investigate the influence of contrast-phase (CP) and slice thickness (ST) on the calculated organ volume. This retrospective study included 431 multiphasic CT datasets-including three CP and two ST reconstructions for abdominal organs-totaling 10,508 organ volumes (10,344 abdominal organ volumes: liver, spleen, and kidneys, 164 lung volumes). Whole-body organ volumes were determined using multi-scale DRL for 3D anatomical landmark detection and 3D organ segmentation.

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Machine learning offers great opportunities to streamline and improve clinical care from the perspective of cardiac imagers, patients, and the industry and is a very active scientific research field. In light of these advances, the European Society of Cardiovascular Radiology (ESCR), a non-profit medical society dedicated to advancing cardiovascular radiology, has assembled a position statement regarding the use of machine learning (ML) in cardiovascular imaging. The purpose of this statement is to provide guidance on requirements for successful development and implementation of ML applications in cardiovascular imaging.

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