Multi-modal fusion and feature enhancement U-Net coupling with stem cell niches proximity estimation for voxel-wise GBM recurrence prediction.

We aim to develop a Multi-modal Fusion and Feature Enhancement U-Net (MFFE U-Net) coupling with stem cell niche proximity estimation to improve voxel-wise Glioblastoma (GBM) recurrence prediction.57 patients with pre- and post-surgery magnetic resonance (MR) scans were retrospectively solicited from 4 databases. Post-surgery MR scans included two months before the clinical diagnosis of recurrence and the day of the radiologicaly confirmed recurrence.

Paired conditional generative adversarial network for highly accelerated liver 4D MRI.

4D MRI with high spatiotemporal resolution is desired for image-guided liver radiotherapy. Acquiring densely sampling k-space data is time-consuming. Accelerated acquisition with sparse samples is desirable but often causes degraded image quality or long reconstruction time.

Deep match: A zero-shot framework for improved fiducial-free respiratory motion tracking.

Background And Purpose: Motion management is essential to reduce normal tissue exposure and maintain adequate tumor dose in lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). Lung SBRT using an articulated robotic arm allows dynamic tracking during radiation dose delivery. Two stereoscopic X-ray tracking modes are available - fiducial-based and fiducial-free tracking.

Delayed PCI is not beneficial for STEMI patients with impaired renal function: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Preexisting impaired renal function (IRF) and contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) are important prognostic parameters, but it is unknown whether delayed PCI is still beneficial for STEMI patients with IRF.

Methods: A retrospective single-center cohort study was performed in 164 patients who presented at least 12 h after symptom onset, and were diagnosed with STEMI and IRF. They were assigned to two groups to receive PCI plus optimal medical therapy (OMT) and OMT alone respectively.

Association Between Serum Galectin-3 Levels and Coronary Stenosis Severity in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease.

Background: The relationship between galectin-3 (Gal-3) and coronary artery disease (CAD) has not been fully elucidated.

Aim: This study aimed to determine the relationship between the presence and severity of CAD and serum Gal-3 levels.

Patients And Methods: Three-hundred thirty-one consecutive CAD patients were enrolled as the study group.

MiR-195-3p is a Novel Prognostic Biomarker Associated with Immune Infiltrates of Lung Adenocarcinoma.

Background: MicroRNA-195-3p (miR-195-3p) plays an important role in some tumors, but its role in LUAD is unclear. This study explored the expression of miR-195-3p in LUAD and the relationship between the expression of miR-195-3p and the clinical and prognostic characteristics of LUAD patients.

Methods: MiR-195-3p expression and clinical information of LUAD patients were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).

Voxelwise Prediction of Recurrent High-Grade Glioma via Proximity Estimation-Coupled Multidimensional Support Vector Machine.

Purpose: To provide early and localized glioblastoma (GBM) recurrence prediction, we introduce a novel postsurgery multiparametric magnetic resonance-based support vector machine (SVM) method coupling with stem cell niche (SCN) proximity estimation.

Methods And Materials: This study used postsurgery magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from 50 patients with recurrent GBM, obtained approximately 2 months before clinically diagnosed recurrence. The main prediction pipeline consisted of a proximity-based estimator to identify regions with high risk of recurrence (HRRs) and an SVM classifier to provide voxelwise prediction in HRRs.

Bladder surface dose modeling in prostate cancer radiotherapy: An analysis of motion-induced variations and the cumulative dose across the treatment.

Purpose: To introduce a novel surface-based dose mapping method to improve quantitative bladder dosimetric assessment in prostate cancer (PC) radiotherapy.

Methods: Based on the planning and daily pre and postfraction MRIs of 12 PC patients, bladder surface models (SMs) were generated on manually delineated contours and regionally aligned via surface-based registration. Subsequently, bladder surface dose models (SDMs) were created using face-wise dose sampling.

Metformin Suppresses the Progress of Diabetes-Accelerated Atherosclerosis by Inhibition of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell Migration Through AMPK-Pdlim5 Pathway.

Our previous work revealed that AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation inhibits vascular smooth muscle cell migration by phosphorylating PDZ and LIM domain 5 (Pdlim5). As metformin is an AMPK activator, we used a mouse vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) line and a mice to investigate whether metformin could inhibit the migration of VSMCs and in a wire-injury model . It is recognized that VSMCs contribute to the major composition of atherosclerotic plaques.

Association Between Fasting Hyperglycemia and New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation in Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction and the Impact on Short- and Long-Term Prognosis.

The relationship between fasting hyperglycemia (FHG) and new-onset atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is unclear, and whether their co-occurrence is associated with a worse in-hospital and long-term prognosis than FHG or AF alone is unknown. To explore the correlation between FHG and new-onset AF in patients with AMI, and their impact on in-hospital and long-term all-cause mortality. We performed a retrospective cohort study comprising 563 AMI patients.

Quantitative Characterization of Tumor Proximity to Stem Cell Niches: Implications on Recurrence and Survival in GBM Patients.

Purpose: Emerging evidence has linked glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) recurrence and survival to stem cell niches (SCNs). However, the traditional tumor-ventricle distance is insufficiently powered for an accurate prediction. We aimed to use a novel inverse distance map for improved prediction.

Automatic detection and segmentation of multiple brain metastases on magnetic resonance image using asymmetric UNet architecture.

Detection of brain metastases is a paramount task in cancer management due both to the number of high-risk patients and the difficulty of achieving consistent detection. In this study, we aim to improve the accuracy of automated brain metastasis (BM) detection methods using a novel asymmetric UNet (asym-UNet) architecture. An end-to-end asymmetric 3D-UNet architecture, with two down-sampling arms and one up-sampling arm, was constructed to capture the imaging features.

Operating Transverse Aortic Constriction with Absorbable Suture to Obtain Transient Myocardial Hypertrophy.

Based on twice transverse aortic constrictions (TACs) in mice, it is proved that myocardial hypertrophic preconditioning (MHP) could attenuate cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and slow down progression to heart failure. For novices, however, the MHP model is usually quite difficult to establish because of the technical obstacles in ventilator operation, opening the chest repeatedly, and bleeding caused by debanding. To facilitate this model, to increase the surgical success rate and to reduce the incidence of bleeding, we switched to absorbable sutures for the first TAC combing with a ventilator-free technique.

Quantifying vascular invasion in pancreatic cancer-a contrast CT based method for surgical resectability evaluation.

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most lethal cancers, with frequent local therapy resistance and dismal 5-year survival rate. To date, surgical resection remains to be the only treatment option offering potential cure. Unfortunately, at diagnosis, the majority of patients demonstrate varying levels of vascular infiltration, which can contraindicate surgical resection.

Value of Galectin-3 in Acute Myocardial Infarction.

Galectins are an ancient family of lectins characterized by evolutionarily conserved amino acid sequences and β-galactoside recognition and binding sites. Galectin-3 (Gal-3) is one of 15 known galectins. This protein has important functions in numerous biological activities, including cardiac fibrosis and heart failure.

Delayed angioplasty is superior to an emergency strategy in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction patients who present late and with infarct artery spontaneous reperfusion before intervention.

Objective: The best time to perform percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients presenting 12 to 72 hours after chest pain is unclear. The aim of this study was to explore whether delayed PCI was superior to emergency PCI in STEMI patients who presented 12 to 72 hours after onset of symptoms and with a spontaneous reperfusion infarct-related artery (IRA).

Methods: STEMI patients who presented 12 to 72 hours after symptom onset were enrolled and assigned to either the emergency PCI or delayed PCI group.

A post-processing method based on interphase motion correction and averaging to improve image quality of 4D magnetic resonance imaging: a clinical feasibility study.

Methods:: Nine patients (seven pancreas, one liver, and one lung) were recruited. 4D-MRI was performed using two prototype k-space sorted techniques, stack-of-stars (SOS) and koosh-ball (KB) acquisitions. Post-processing using MoCoAve was implemented for both methods.

Combined morphologic and metabolic pipeline for Positron emission tomography/computed tomography based radiotherapy response evaluation in locally advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Background And Purpose: Adaptive radiation planning for pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PA) relies on accurate treatment response assessment, while traditional response evaluation criteria inefficiently characterize tumors with complex morphological features or intrinsically low metabolism. To better assess treatment response of PA, we quantify and compare regional morphological and metabolic features of the 3D pre- and post-radiation therapy (RT) tumor models.

Materials And Methods: Thirty-one PA patients with pre and post-RT Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scans were evaluated.

Prognostic Value of Hemoglobin A1c Levels in Postmenopausal Diabetic Patients Undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) for Acute Coronary Syndrome.

BACKGROUND The purpose of our study was to analyze the clinical value of glycosylated hemoglobin Alc (HbA1c) levels in postmenopausal women with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and diabetes following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). MATERIAL AND METHODS A total of 173 consecutive postmenopausal patients with comorbid diabetes underwent PCI for primary ACS were enrolled in this study. Serum HbA1c levels were measured prior to PCI, and baseline clinical characteristics of all patients were collected.

Discriminating lung adenocarcinoma from lung squamous cell carcinoma using respiration-induced tumor shape changes.

Based on 4D-CT, we aimed to characterize the pattern of morphological changes in lung tumors during respiration, and investigated its potential in non-invasively differentiating lung adenocarcinoma (AC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). We applied a 3D surface analysis on 22 tumors (13 AC, 9 SCC) to investigate the tumor regional morphological fluctuations in response to respiration phases. Tumor surface vertices among ten respiratory phases were matched using surface-based registration, and the shape descriptors (ρ and detJ) were calculated and tracked across respiration stages in a regionally aligned scenario.

Tractography in the clinics: Implementing a pipeline to characterize early brain development.

In imaging studies of neonates, particularly in the clinical setting, diffusion tensor imaging-based tractography is typically unreliable due to the use of fast acquisition protocols that yield low resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). These image acquisition protocols are implemented with the aim of reducing motion artifacts that may be produced by the movement of the neonate's head during the scanning session. Furthermore, axons are not yet fully myelinated in these subjects.

A T1 and DTI fused 3D corpus callosum analysis in MCI subjects with high and low cardiovascular risk profile.

Understanding the extent to which vascular disease and its risk factors are associated with prodromal dementia, notably Alzheimer's disease (AD), may enhance predictive accuracy as well as guide early interventions. One promising avenue to determine this relationship consists of looking for reliable and sensitive imaging methods capable of characterizing the subtle brain alterations before the clinical manifestations. However, little is known from the imaging perspective about how risk factors such as vascular disease influence AD progression.

Mapping the basal ganglia alterations in children chronically exposed to manganese.

Chronic manganese (Mn) exposure is associated with neuromotor and neurocognitive deficits, but the exact mechanism of Mn neurotoxicity is still unclear. With the advent of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in-vivo analysis of brain structures has become possible. Among different sub-cortical structures, the basal ganglia (BG) has been investigated as a putative anatomical biomarker in MR-based studies of Mn toxicity.

Putamen Development in Children 12 to 21 Months Old.

We studied the developmental trajectory of the putamen in 13-21 months old children using multivariate surface tensor-based morphometry. Our results indicate surface changes between 12 and 15 months' age groups in the middle superior part the left putamen. The growth of the left putamen at earlier ages slows down after 15 months.

Multivariate surface-based analysis of corpus callosum in patients with sickle cell disease.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a genetic hematological disease in which the hemoglobin molecule in red blood cells is abnormal. It is closely associated with many symptoms, including pain, anemia, chest syndrome and neurocognitive impairment. One of the most debilitating symptoms is elevated risk for cerebro-vascular accidents.