Automated Morphometric Analysis of the Hip Joint on MRI from the German National Cohort Study.

Purpose: To develop and validate an automated morphometric analysis framework for the quantitative analysis of geometric hip joint parameters in MR images from the German National Cohort (GNC) study.

Materials And Methods: A secondary analysis on 40 participants (mean age, 51 years; age range, 30-67 years; 25 women) from the prospective GNC MRI study (2015-2016) was performed. Based on a proton density-weighted three-dimensional fast spin-echo sequence, a morphometric analysis approach was developed, including deep learning-based landmark localization, bone segmentation of the femora and pelvis, and a shape model for annotation transfer.

Uncertainty estimation and explainability in deep learning-based age estimation of the human brain: Results from the German National Cohort MRI study.

Brain ageing is a complex neurobiological process associated with morphological changes that can be assessed on MRI scans. Recently, Deep learning (DL)-based approaches have been proposed for the prediction of chronological brain age from MR images yielding high accuracy. These approaches, however, usually do not address quantification of uncertainty and, therefore, intrinsic physiological variability.

A Two Joint Neck Model to Identify Malposition of the Head Relative to the Thorax.

Neck pain is a frequent health complaint. Prolonged protracted malpositions of the head are associated with neck pain and headaches and could be prevented using biofeedback systems. A practical biofeedback system to detect malpositions should be realized with a simple measurement setup.

Pre-ictal heart rate variability alterations in focal onset seizures and response to vagus nerve stimulation.

Purpose: Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an effective and well-known treatment for drug resistant epilepsy (DRE) patients since 1997, yet prediction of treatment response before implantation is subject of ongoing research. Neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies investigating the vagal afferent network in resting state documented that differences in between epilepsy patients were related to treatment response. This study investigated whether an event-related parameter, pre-ictal heart rate variability (HRV) is associated with response to VNS therapy.

Imaging Pulmonary Blood Flow Using Pseudocontinuous Arterial Spin Labeling (PCASL) With Balanced Steady-State Free-Precession (bSSFP) Readout at 1.5T.

Background: Quantitative assessment of pulmonary blood flow and visualization of its temporal and spatial distribution without contrast media is of clinical significance.

Purpose: To assess the potential of electrocardiogram (ECG)-triggered pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling (PCASL) imaging with balanced steady-state free-precession (bSSFP) readout to measure lung perfusion under free-breathing (FB) conditions and to study temporal and spatial characteristics of pulmonary blood flow.

Study Type: Prospective, observational.

Independent attenuation correction of whole body [F]FDG-PET using a deep learning approach with Generative Adversarial Networks.

Background: Attenuation correction (AC) of PET data is usually performed using a second imaging for the generation of attenuation maps. In certain situations however-when CT- or MR-derived attenuation maps are corrupted or CT acquisition solely for the purpose of AC shall be avoided-it would be of value to have the possibility of obtaining attenuation maps only based on PET information. The purpose of this study was to thus develop, implement, and evaluate a deep learning-based method for whole body [F]FDG-PET AC which is independent of other imaging modalities for acquiring the attenuation map.

Author Correction: An Effective Way for Simulating Oceanic Turbulence Channel on the Beam Carrying Orbital Angular Momentum.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Effects of simulated dose variation on contrast-enhanced CT-based radiomic analysis for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Purpose: To examine the potential effect of CT dose variation on radiomic features in vivo using simulated contrast-enhanced CT dose reduction in patients with non-small lung cell cancer (NSCLC).

Methods: In this retrospective study, we included 69 patients (25 females, 44 males, median age 66 years) with histologically proven NSCLC who underwent a whole contrast-enhanced body FDG-PET/CT for primary staging. To simulate different CT dose levels, we used an algorithm to simulate low-dose CT images based on a noise model derived from phantom experiments.

MedGAN: Medical image translation using GANs.

Image-to-image translation is considered a new frontier in the field of medical image analysis, with numerous potential applications. However, a large portion of recent approaches offers individualized solutions based on specialized task-specific architectures or require refinement through non-end-to-end training. In this paper, we propose a new framework, named MedGAN, for medical image-to-image translation which operates on the image level in an end-to-end manner.

Phase Matching Quantum Key Distribution based on Single-Photon Entanglement.

Two time-reversal quantum key distribution (QKD) schemes are the quantum entanglement based device-independent (DI)-QKD and measurement-device-independent (MDI)-QKD. The recently proposed twin field (TF)-QKD, also known as phase-matching (PM)-QKD, has improved the key rate bound from O(η) to O[Formula: see text] with η the channel transmittance. In fact, TF-QKD is a kind of MDI-QKD but based on single-photon detection.

Independent brain F-FDG PET attenuation correction using a deep learning approach with Generative Adversarial Networks.

Objective: Attenuation correction (AC) of positron emission tomography (PET) data poses a challenge when no transmission data or computed tomography (CT) data are available, e.g. in stand alone PET scanners or PET/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

An Effective Way for Simulating Oceanic Turbulence Channel on the Beam Carrying Orbital Angular Momentum.

In this paper, we present an effective way for simulating oceanic turbulence channel on the beam carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). The influence caused by oceanic turbulence channel on the phase and intensity of the propagation beam is equivalent to that the beam passing through several individual phase screens generated by power spectrum inversion method at regular intervals. A modified subharmonic compensation method is then further balance the phase screen for the losses of lower frequency components in the power spectrum inversion method.

Concurrent validity and reliability of a mobile tracking technology to measure angular and linear movements of the neck.

The neck can be moved in six degrees of freedom. Current 3D-optoelectronic motion-capture systems capable of measuring these movements are inappropriate for use in clinical practice because they are stationary, expensive and time-consuming. We therefore developed a less complex 3D-tracking technology based on Steam®VR to measure six degrees of freedom in a clinical setting.

Propagation and self-healing properties of Bessel-Gaussian beam carrying orbital angular momentum in an underwater environment.

In this paper, we report on experimental demonstration of the propagation and self-healing property of Bessel-Gaussian (BG) beam carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) in an underwater environment. Especially, the effects of topological charge, temperature gradient, and salinity on the transmission and self-reconstruction of BG beam in underwater turbulence are analyzed. The results show that the detection probabilities both for propagation and self-healing greatly decrease with temperature gradient, and gradually decrease with salinity.

Spatial-temporal perfusion patterns of the human liver assessed by pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling MRI.

Purpose: To investigate the capabilities of a modern pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (PCASL) technique for non-invasive assessment of the temporal and spatial distribution of the liver perfusion in healthy volunteers on a clinical MR system at 3T.

Materials And Methods: A 2D-PCASL multi-slice echo planar imaging sequence was adapted to the specific conditions in liver: a) labeling by PCASL was optimized to the flow characteristics in the portal vein, b) background suppression was applied for reduction of motion related artifacts, c) post labeling delays (PLDs) were varied over a large range (0.7-3.

ImFEATbox: a toolbox for extraction and analysis of medical image features.

Purpose: In medical imaging, the digital post-processing and analysis of acquired images has become an important research field. Topics include various applications of image processing and machine learning aiming to assist radiologists in their diagnostic work. A crucial step in successfully implementing such systems is finding appropriate mathematical descriptions to reflect characteristics of acquired images.

Volumetric assessment of spontaneous mechanical activities by simultaneous multi-slice MRI techniques with correlation to muscle fiber orientation.

The purpose of this work was assessment of volumetric characteristics of spontaneous mechanical activities in musculature (SMAMs) by diffusion-weighted simultaneous multi-slice (DW-SMS) imaging and spatial correlation to anatomical structure, as revealed by fusion to fiber tractographic information derived from diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI). The feasibility of using DW-SMS to image spontaneous events in human musculature was assessed by phantom measurements. Series of DW-SMS images and DTI datasets were recorded from the resting calf of three human subjects.

A machine-learning framework for automatic reference-free quality assessment in MRI.

Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging offers a wide variety of imaging techniques. A large amount of data is created per examination which needs to be checked for sufficient quality in order to derive a meaningful diagnosis. This is a manual process and therefore time- and cost-intensive.

Acceleration of Magnetic Resonance Cholangiopancreatography Using Compressed Sensing at 1.5 and 3 T: A Clinical Feasibility Study.

Objectives: Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) is an established technique in routine magnetic resonance examination. By applying the compressed sensing (CS) acceleration technique to conventional MRCP sequences, scan time can be markedly reduced. With promising results at 3 T, there is a necessity to evaluate the performance at 1.

Deterministic realization of collective measurements via photonic quantum walks.

Collective measurements on identically prepared quantum systems can extract more information than local measurements, thereby enhancing information-processing efficiency. Although this nonclassical phenomenon has been known for two decades, it has remained a challenging task to demonstrate the advantage of collective measurements in experiments. Here, we introduce a general recipe for performing deterministic collective measurements on two identically prepared qubits based on quantum walks.

Driver Fusions and Their Implications in the Development and Treatment of Human Cancers.

Gene fusions represent an important class of somatic alterations in cancer. We systematically investigated fusions in 9,624 tumors across 33 cancer types using multiple fusion calling tools. We identified a total of 25,664 fusions, with a 63% validation rate.

Bell's inequality tests via correlated diffraction of high-dimensional position-entangled two-photon states.

Bell inequality testing, a well-established method to demonstrate quantum non-locality between remote two-partite entangled systems, is playing an important role in the field of quantum information. The extension to high-dimensional entangled systems, using the so-called Bell-CGLMP inequality, points the way in measuring joint probabilities, the kernel block to construct high dimensional Bell inequalities. Here we show that in theory the joint probability of a two-partite system entangled in a Hilbert space can be measured by choosing a set of basis vectors in its dual space that are related by a Fourier transformation.

Scan time reduction in diffusion-weighted imaging of the pancreas using a simultaneous multislice technique with different acceleration factors: How fast can we go?

Objectives: To investigate the feasibility of simultaneous multislice-accelerated diffusion-weighted imaging (sms-DWI) of the pancreas with different acceleration factors and its influence on image quality, acquisition time and apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) in comparison to conventional sequences.

Methods: DWI of the pancreas was performed at 1.5T in ten healthy volunteers and 20 patients with sms-accelerated echo-planar DWI using two different sms-acceleration factors of 2 and 3 (sms2/3-DWI).

Plug-and-play round-robin differential phase-shift quantum key distribution.

The round-robin differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution (RRDPS-QKD) protocol could provide an effective way to estimate the leakage information without monitoring the signal disturbance. Moreover, the self-compensating property of plug-and-play (P&P) setup can eliminate the variations of phase or polarization in QKD procedure. In the paper, we introduce the P&P concept into RRDPS-QKD, and propose a QKD protocol, named P&P RRDPS-QKD protocol, to make the RRDPS-QKD scheme more practical.

Automated reference-free detection of motion artifacts in magnetic resonance images.

Objectives: Our objectives were to provide an automated method for spatially resolved detection and quantification of motion artifacts in MR images of the head and abdomen as well as a quality control of the trained architecture.

Materials And Methods: T1-weighted MR images of the head and the upper abdomen were acquired in 16 healthy volunteers under rest and under motion. Images were divided into overlapping patches of different sizes achieving spatial separation.