Revamping Undergraduate Radiology Education in a Problem-Based Learning Driven Institution: Successes, Challenges, and Lessons Learned.

Radiology teaching for undergraduate medical students is often limited in amount and lacking a longitudinal approach spanning multiple years. At our institution, we had a goal to develop a formal and sustainable radiology curriculum. There were sequential changes made to the curriculum over several years and here, the successes, challenges, and lessons learned are outlined.

The Radiation Therapist profession through the lens of new technology: A practice development paper based on the ESTRO Radiation Therapist Workshops.

Technological advances in radiation therapy impact on the role and scope of practice of the radiation therapist. The European Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) recently held two workshops on this topic and this position paper reflects the outcome of this workshop, which included radiation therapists from all global regions. Workflows, quality assurance, research, IGRT and ART as well as clinical decision making are the areas of radiation therapist practice that will be highly influenced by advancing technology in the near future.

An asynchronous wireless network for capturing event-driven data from large populations of autonomous sensors.

Networks of spatially distributed radiofrequency identification sensors could be used to collect data in wearable or implantable biomedical applications. However, the development of scalable networks remains challenging. Here we report a wireless radiofrequency network approach that can capture sparse event-driven data from large populations of spatially distributed autonomous microsensors.

Design and Validation of Miniaturized Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) Head Coils.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a rapidly developing therapeutic modality for the safe and effective treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, clinical rTMS driving systems and head coils are large, heavy, and expensive, so miniaturized, affordable rTMS devices may facilitate treatment access for patients at home, in underserved areas, in field and mobile hospitals, on ships and submarines, and in space. The central component of a portable rTMS system is a miniaturized, lightweight coil.

Comparative Study of Eclipse and RayStation Multi-Criteria Optimization-Based Prostate Radiotherapy Treatment Planning Quality.

Multi-criteria optimization (MCO) function has been available on commercial radiotherapy (RT) treatment planning systems to improve plan quality; however, no study has compared Eclipse and RayStation MCO functions for prostate RT planning. The purpose of this study was to compare prostate RT MCO plan qualities in terms of discrepancies between Pareto optimal and final deliverable plans, and dosimetric impact of final deliverable plans. In total, 25 computed tomography datasets of prostate cancer patients were used for Eclipse (version 16.

Computed Tomography-Based Radiomics for Long-Term Prognostication of High-Risk Localized Prostate Cancer Patients Received Whole Pelvic Radiotherapy.

Given the high death rate caused by high-risk prostate cancer (PCa) (>40%) and the reliability issues associated with traditional prognostic markers, the purpose of this study is to investigate planning computed tomography (pCT)-based radiomics for the long-term prognostication of high-risk localized PCa patients who received whole pelvic radiotherapy (WPRT). This is a retrospective study with methods based on best practice procedures for radiomics research. Sixty-four patients were selected and randomly assigned to training ( = 45) and testing ( = 19) cohorts for radiomics model development with five major steps: pCT image acquisition using a Philips Big Bore CT simulator; multiple manual segmentations of clinical target volume for the prostate (CTV) on the pCT images; feature extraction from the CTV using PyRadiomics; feature selection for overfitting avoidance; and model development with three-fold cross-validation.

Trialkylphosphonium Oxoborate as C(sp )-H Oxyanion Hole Catalyst for Diels-Alder Reaction.

We have developed a catalytic protocol for Diels-Alder reaction using trialkylphosphonium oxoborates as oxyanion hole catalysts. The reaction can be operated under ambient conditions. Dienes could easily polymerize under acidic condition.

Predictive Factors for Chemoradiation-Induced Oral Mucositis and Dysphagia in Head and Neck Cancer: A Scoping Review.

Despite advances in head and neck cancer treatment, virtually all patients experience chemoradiation-induced toxicities. Oral mucositis (OM) and dysphagia are among the most prevalent and have a systemic impact on patients, hampering treatment outcome and harming quality of life. Accurate prediction of severe cases is crucial for improving management strategies and, ultimately, patient outcomes.

Trialkylphosphonium oxoborates as C(sp)-H oxyanion holes and their application in catalytic chemoselective acetalization.

The use of trialkylphosphonium oxoborates (TOB) as catalysts is reported. The site-isolated borate counter anion in a TOB catalyst increases the availability of C(sp)-H to interact with electron donor substrates. The catalytic protocol is applicable to a wide range of substrates in the acetalization reaction and provides excellent chemoselectivity in the acetalization over thioacetalization in the presence of alcohols and thiols, which is otherwise hard to achieve using typical acid catalysts.

Comparative Study of Plan Robustness for Breast Radiotherapy: Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy Plans with Robust Optimization versus Manual Flash Approach.

A previous study investigated robustness of manual flash (MF) and robust optimized (RO) volumetric modulated arc therapy plans for breast radiotherapy based on five patients in 2020 and indicated that the RO was more robust than the MF, although the MF is still current standard practice. The purpose of this study was to compare their plan robustness in terms of dose variation to clinical target volume (CTV) and organs at risk (OARs) based on a larger sample size. This was a retrospective study involving 34 female patients.

Versatile On-Chip Programming of Circuit Hardware for Wearable and Implantable Biomedical Microdevices.

Wearable and implantable microscale electronic sensors have been developed for a range of biomedical applications. The sensors, typically millimeter size silicon microchips, are sought for multiple sensing functions but are severely constrained by size and power. To address these challenges, a hardware programmable application-specific integrated circuit design is proposed and post-process methodology is exemplified by the design of battery-less wireless microchips.

First-spike coding promotes accurate and efficient spiking neural networks for discrete events with rich temporal structures.

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are well-suited to process asynchronous event-based data. Most of the existing SNNs use rate-coding schemes that focus on firing rate (FR), and so they generally ignore the spike timing in events. On the contrary, methods based on temporal coding, particularly time-to-first-spike (TTFS) coding, can be accurate and efficient but they are difficult to train.

Standardized Reporting on the Preoperative CT Assessment of Potential Living Renal Transplant Donors: Can We Create a Universal Report Standard to Meet the Needs of Transplant Urologists?

Determine whether standardized template reporting for the preoperative assessment of potential living renal transplant donors improves the comprehensiveness of radiology reports to meet the needs of urologists performing renal transplants. Urologist and radiologist stakeholders from renal transplant centres in our province ratified a standardized reporting template for evaluation of potential renal donors. Three centres (A, B, and C) were designated "intervention" groups.

Stress Exposure of Evolved Bacteriophages under Laboratory versus Food Processing Conditions Highlights Challenges in Translatability.

Bacterial viruses, or bacteriophages, are highly potent, target-specific antimicrobials. Bacteriophages can be safely applied along the food production chain to aid control of foodborne pathogens. However, bacteriophages are often sensitive to the environments encountered in food matrices and under processing conditions, thus limiting their applicability.

Addition of CT to Improve the Diagnostic Confidence for the Detection of Sacroiliac Joint Erosions in Patients with Equivocal MRI Findings.

Purpose: To determine if CT can improve the diagnostic confidence for the detection of sacroiliac joint (SIJ) erosions in patients with equivocal MRI findings.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of adult patients who had an SIJ MRI and a subsequent SIJ CT within 12 months was conducted. Using a 5-point Likert scale, two reviewers evaluated the de-identified MRI and CT images in randomized order and in separate sessions to answer the question: "Does the patient have SIJ erosions?".

A Compact Circuit for Boosting Electric Field Intensity in Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS).

The concept of a portable, wearable system for repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS) has attracted widespread attention, but significant power and field intensity requirements remain a key challenge. Here, a circuit topology is described that significantly increases induced electric field intensity over that attainable with similar current levels and coils in conventional rTMS systems. The resultant electric field is essentially monophasic, and has a controllable, shortened duration.

The incidence and duration of COVID-19 vaccine-related reactive lymphadenopathy on F-FDG PET-CT.

Objectives: Reactive axillary lymph nodes (ALN) may occur post-COVID-19 vaccination. This may be confused with malignant nodal metastases on oncological imaging. We aimed to determine the reactive ALN incidence and duration on F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography - computed tomography (F-FDG PET-CT), and its relationship with gender, age and vaccine type.

Neural heterogeneity promotes robust learning.

The brain is a hugely diverse, heterogeneous structure. Whether or not heterogeneity at the neural level plays a functional role remains unclear, and has been relatively little explored in models which are often highly homogeneous. We compared the performance of spiking neural networks trained to carry out tasks of real-world difficulty, with varying degrees of heterogeneity, and found that heterogeneity substantially improved task performance.

Quantitative Point-of-Care Colorimetric Assay Modeling Using a Handheld Colorimeter.

Colorimetric assays typically offer a rapid and convenient method to assess analytes that span healthcare monitoring to water quality testing. However, such tests can only provide qualitative results when employed in resource-limited settings or require bulky and expensive equipment such as lab spectrophotometers to allow quantitative measurements. In this paper, we report on the use of a handheld colorimeter to quantitatively determine the concentration of analytes in a manner that is independent of ambient lighting or initial sample color.

Practical microcircuits for handheld acoustofluidics.

Acoustofluidics has promised to enable lab-on-a-chip and point-of-care devices in ways difficult to achieve using other methods. Piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers-as small as the chips they actuate-provide rapid fluid and suspended object transport. Acoustofluidic lab-on-chip devices offer a vast range of benefits in early disease identification and noninvasive drug delivery.

A Scalable and Low Stress Post-CMOS Processing Technique for Implantable Microsensors.

Implantable active electronic microchips are being developed as multinode in-body sensors and actuators. There is a need to develop high throughput microfabrication techniques applicable to complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-based silicon electronics in order to process bare dies from a foundry to physiologically compatible implant ensembles. Post-processing of a miniature CMOS chip by usual methods is challenging as the typically sub-mm size small dies are hard to handle and not readily compatible with the standard microfabrication, e.

A Compact Battery-Powered rTMS Prototype.

This paper describes the design and testing of a compact, battery-powered repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) prototype. This device generates a 10 Hz magnetic pulse train with peak flux density of 100 mT at 2 cm distance. Circuit component design, including the inductor, switched LC resonator, and boost converter, are discussed in the context of weight and size reduction, and performance optimization.

A Distributed Wireless Network of Implantable Sub-mm Cortical Microstimulators for Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Scalability of implantable neural interface devices is a critical bottleneck in enhancing the performance of cortical Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) through access to high density and multi-areal cortical signals. This is challenging to achieve through current monolithic constructs with 100-200 channels, often with bulky tethering and packaging, and a spatially distributed sensor approach has recently been explored by a few groups, including our laboratories [1]. In this paper, we describe a microscale (500 μm) programmable neural stimulator in the context of an epicortical wireless networked system of sub-mm "Neurograins" with wireless energy harvesting (near 1 GHz) and bidirectional telemetry.

Validation of Region of Interest Measurements for the Objective Assessment of Post-Contrast Enhancement of Renal Lesions on MRI.

Objective: The aim of this study was to validate the use of region of interest (ROI) measurements in MRI to objectively assess for enhancement in suspected solid renal masses and to determine a minimum threshold value for true enhancement.

Methods: Contrast-enhanced renal MRI studies performed between January 2015 and December 2017 for patients with a known renal mass who had subsequent biopsy, or partial/radical nephrectomy were included. Two body imaging fellows independently measured the mean ROI values of renal masses, normal renal parenchyma, the ipsilateral psoas muscle and external air on the pre- and post-contrast sequences.