Enhanced MRI Radiomics Based Model for Predicting Recurrence or Metastasis of Nasopharyngeal Cancer (NC) Undergoing Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy: A Retrospective Study.

Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NC) refers to the malignant tumor that occurs at the top and side walls of the nasopharyngeal cavity. The NC incidence rate always dominates the first among the malignant tumors of the ear, nose and throat, and mainly occurs in Asia. NC cases are mainly concentrated in southern provinces in China, with about 4 million existing NC. With the pollution of environment and pickled diet, and the increase of life pressure, the domestic NC incidence rate has reached 4.5-6.5/100000 and is increasing year by year. It was reported that the known main causes of NC include hereditary factor, genetic mutations, and EB virus infection, common clinical symptoms of NC include nasal congestion, bloody mucus, etc. About 90% of NC is highly sensitive to radiotherapy which is regard as the preferred treatment method; However, for NC with lower differentiation, larger volume, and recurrence after treatment, surgical resection and local protons and heavy ions therapy are also indispensable means. According to reports, the subtle heterogeneity and diversity exists in some NC, with about 80% of NC undergone radiotherapy and about 25% experienced recurrence and death within five years after radiotherapy in China. Therefore, screening the NC population with suspected recurrence after concurrent chemoradiotherapy may improve survival rates in current clinical decision-making.

NC is one of the prevalent malignancies of the head and neck region with poor prognosis. The aim of this study is to establish a predictive model for assessing NC prognosis using clinical and MR radiomics data.

Individualized radiology screening for newly diagnosed nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

OBJECTIVES: Current guidelines recommend universal PET/CT screening for metastases staging in newly diagnosed nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) despite the low rate of synchronous distant metastasis (SDM). The study aims to achieve individualized screening recommendations of NPC based on the risk of SDM. METHODS AND MATERIALS: 18 pre-treatment peripheral blood indicators was retrospectively collected from 2271 primary NPC patients. A peripheral blood risk score (PBRS) was constructed by indicators associated with SDM on least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression. The PBRS-based distant metastases (PBDM) model was developed from features selected by logistic regression analyses in the training cohort and then validated in the validation cohort. Receiver operator characteristic curve analysis, calibration curves, and decision curve analysis were applied to evaluate PBDM model performance. RESULTS: Pre-treatment Epstein-Barr viral DNA copy number, percentage of total lymphocytes, serum lactate dehydrogenase level, and monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio were most strongly associated with SDM in NPC and used to construct the PBRS. Sex (male), T stage (T3-4), N stage (N2-3), and PBRS (≥1.076) were identified as independent risk factors for SDM and applied in the PBDM model, which showed good performance. Through the model, patients in the training cohort were stratified into low-, medium-, and high-risk groups. Individualized screening recommendations were then developed for patients with differing risk levels. CONCLUSION: The PBDM model offers individualized recommendations for applying PET/CT for metastases staging in NPC, allowing more targeted screening of patients with greater risk of SDM compared with current recommendations.

Prognostic value of pre-treatment [18F] FDG PET/CT in recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma without distant metastasis.

BACKGROUND: [18 F]-Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) has the ability to detect local and/or regional recurrence as well as distant metastasis. We aimed to evaluate the prognosis value of PET/CT in locoregional recurrent nasopharyngeal (lrNPC). METHODS: A total of 451 eligible patients diagnosed with recurrent I-IVA (rI-IVA) NPC between April 2009 and December 2015 were retrospectively included in this study. The differences in overall survival (OS) of lrNPC patients with and without PET/CT were compared in the I-II, III-IVA, r0-II, and rIII-IVA cohorts, which were grouped by initial staging and recurrent staging (according to MRI). RESULTS: In the III-IVA and rIII-IVA NPC patients, with PET/CT exhibited significantly higher OS rates in the univariate analysis (P = 0.045; P = 0.009; respectively). Multivariate analysis revealed that with PET/CT was an independent predictor of OS in the rIII-IVA cohort (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.476; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.267 to 0.847; P = 0.012). In the rIII-IVA NPC, patients receiving PET/CT sacns before salvage surgery had a better prognosis compared with MRI alone (P = 0.036). The recurrent stage (based on PET/CT) was an independent predictor of OS. (r0-II versus [vs]. rIII-IVA; HR = 0.376; 95% CI: 0.150 to 0.938; P = 0.036). CONCLUSION: The present study showed that with PET/CT could improve overall survival for rIII-IVA NPC patients. PET/CT appears to be an effective method for assessing rTNM staging.

WET-UNet: Wavelet integrated efficient transformer networks for nasopharyngeal carcinoma tumor segmentation.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is a malignant tumor that occurs in the epithelium and mucosal glands of the nasopharynx, and its pathological type is mostly poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma. Since the nasopharynx is located deep in the head and neck, early diagnosis and timely treatment are critical to patient survival. However, nasopharyngeal carcinoma tumors are small in size and vary widely in shape, and it is also a challenge for experienced doctors to delineate tumor contours. In addition, due to the special location of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, complex treatments such as radiotherapy or surgical resection are often required, so accurate pathological diagnosis is also very important for the selection of treatment options. However, the current deep learning segmentation model faces the problems of inaccurate segmentation and unstable segmentation process, which are mainly limited by the accuracy of data sets, fuzzy boundaries, and complex lines. In order to solve these two challenges, this article proposes a hybrid model WET-UNet based on the UNet network as a powerful alternative for nasopharyngeal cancer image segmentation. On the one hand, wavelet transform is integrated into UNet to enhance the lesion boundary information by using low-frequency components to adjust the encoder at low frequencies and optimize the subsequent computational process of the Transformer to improve the accuracy and robustness of image segmentation. On the other hand, the attention mechanism retains the most valuable pixels in the image for us, captures the remote dependencies, and enables the network to learn more representative features to improve the recognition ability of the model. Comparative experiments show that our network structure outperforms other models for nasopharyngeal cancer image segmentation, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of adding two modules to help tumor segmentation. The total data set of this article is 5000, and the ratio of training and verification is 8:2. In the experiment, accuracy = 85.2% and precision = 84.9% can show that our proposed model has good performance in nasopharyngeal cancer image segmentation.

Pretreatment multiparametric MRI radiomics-integrated clinical hematological biomarkers can predict early rapid metastasis in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: To establish and validate a predictive model combining pretreatment multiparametric MRI-based radiomic signatures and clinical characteristics for the risk evaluation of early rapid metastasis in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients. METHODS: The cutoff time was used to randomly assign 219 consecutive patients who underwent chemoradiation treatment to the training group (n = 154) or the validation group (n = 65). Pretreatment multiparametric magnetic resonance (MR) images of individuals with NPC were employed to extract 428 radiomic features. LASSO regression analysis was used to select radiomic features related to early rapid metastasis and develop the Rad-score. Blood indicators were collected within 1 week of pretreatment. To identify independent risk variables for early rapid metastasis, univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were employed. Finally, multivariate logistic regression analysis was applied to construct a radiomics and clinical prediction nomogram that integrated radiomic features and clinical and blood inflammatory predictors. RESULTS: The NLR, T classification and N classification were found to be independent risk indicators for early rapid metastasis by multivariate logistic regression analysis. Twelve features associated with early rapid metastasis were selected by LASSO regression analysis, and the Rad-score was calculated. The AUC of the Rad-score was 0.773. Finally, we constructed and validated a prediction model in combination with the NLR, T classification, N classification and Rad-score. The area under the curve (AUC) was 0.936 (95% confidence interval (95% CI): 0.901-0.971), and in the validation cohort, the AUC was 0.796 (95% CI: 0.686-0.905). CONCLUSIONS: A predictive model that integrates the NLR, T classification, N classification and MR-based radiomics for distinguishing early rapid metastasis may serve as a clinical risk stratification tool for effectively guiding individual management.

Nomograms based on multiparametric MRI radiomics integrated with clinical-radiological features for predicting the response to induction chemotherapy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE: To establish nomograms integrating multiparametric MRI radiomics with clinical-radiological features to identify the responders and non-responders to induction chemotherapy (ICT) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed the clinical and MRI data of 168 NPC patients between December 2015 and April 2022. We used 3D-Slicer to segment the regions of interest (ROIs) and the "Pyradiomic" package to extract radiomics features. We applied the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression to select radiomics features. We developed clinical-only, radiomics-only, and the combined clinical-radiomics nomograms using logistic regression analysis. The receiver operating characteristic curves, DeLong test, calibration, and decision curves were used to assess the discriminative performance of the models. The model was internally validated using 10-fold cross-validation. RESULTS: A total of 14 optimal features were finally selected to develop a radiomic signature, with an AUC of 0.891 (95 % CI, 0.825-0.946) in the training cohort and 0.837 (95 % CI, 0.723-0.932) in the testing cohort. The nomogram based on the Rad-Score and clinical-radiological factors for evaluating tumor response to ICT yielded an AUC of 0.926 (95 % CI, 0.875-0.965) and 0.901 (95 % CI, 0.815-0.979) in the two cohorts, respectively. Decision curves demonstrated that the combined clinical-radiomics nomograms were clinically useful. CONCLUSION: Nomograms integrating multiparametric MRI-based radiomics and clinical-radiological features could non-invasively discriminate ICT responders from non-responders in NPC patients.

Semi-supervised model based on implicit neural representation and mutual learning (SIMN) for multi-center nasopharyngeal carcinoma segmentation on MRI.

BACKGROUND: The issue of using deep learning to obtain accurate gross tumor volume (GTV) and metastatic lymph nodes (MLN) segmentation for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) on heterogeneous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images with limited labeling remains unsolved. METHOD: We collected 918 patients with MRI images from three hospitals to develop and validate models and proposed a semi-supervised framework for the fine delineation of multi-center NPC boundaries by integrating uncertainty-based implicit neural representations named SIMN. The framework utilizes the deep mutual learning approach with CNN and Transformer, incorporating dynamic thresholds. Additionally, domain adaptive algorithms are employed to enhance the performance. RESULTS: SIMN predictions have a high overlap ratio with the ground truth. Under the 20 % labeled cases, for the internal test cohorts, the average DSC in GTV and MLN are 0.7981 and 0.7804, respectively; for external test cohort Wu Zhou Red Cross Hospital, the average DSC in GTV and MLN are 0.7217 and 0.7581, respectively; for external test cohorts First People Hospital of Foshan, the average DSC in GTV and MLN are 0.7004 and 0.7692, respectively. No significant differences are found in DSC, HD95, ASD, and Recall for patients with different clinical categories. Moreover, SIMN outperformed existing classical semi-supervised methods. CONCLUSIONS: SIMN showed a highly accurate GTV and MLN segmentation for NPC on multi-center MRI images under Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL), which can easily transfer to other centers without fine-tuning. It suggests that it has the potential to act as a generalized delineation solution for heterogeneous MRI images with limited labels in clinical deployment.

Predictive significance of pretreatment 18F-FDG PET volumetric parameters on survival outcomes in pediatric patients with locally advanced undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a rare pediatric cancer. Most children are first diagnosed with advanced locoregional disease. Identification of patients at higher risk of treatment failure is crucial as they may benefit from more aggressive initial treatment approaches. 18Fluorine-labeled fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) has shown promise as a prognostic tool for predicting outcomes. METHODS: Retrospective study of pediatric patients with locally advanced undifferentiated NPC who underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT prior to intial treatment. Predictive significance of metabolic PET parameters on survival outcomes were estimated. RESULTS: Thirty-two children were included, age range was 7.1-18 years at the time of diagnosis. The median follow-up duration was 46.1 months. Three patients (9.4%) were classified as AJCC stage IIb, 13 patients (40.6%) as stage IIIa, eight patients (25%) as stage IIIb, and eight patients (25%) as stage IVa. Our findings revealed that high whole-body metabolic tumor volume at the threshold of hepatic reference SUVmean (WB-MTV-HR) (>135 mL) was associated with significantly lower event-free survival (EFS) compared to the low WB-MTV-HR group (≤135 mL) (3-year EFS: 50% ± 18% vs. 82% ± 8%; p = .015). Additionally, the 3-year overall survival (OS) rates differed significantly between the high whole-body metabolic tumor volume at the threshold of an SUV of 2.5 isocontour (WB-MTV-2.5) group (MTV >74 mL) and the low WB-MTV-2.5 group (MTV ≤74 mL) (63% ± 18% vs. 100%; p = .021). CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that WB-MTV parameters could serve as significant prognostic factors for disease progression in pediatric patients with locally advanced undifferentiated NPC. However, further prospective studies with larger sample sizes are needed to validate these findings.

MFNet: Meta-learning based on frequency-space mix for MRI segmentation in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Deep learning techniques have been applied to medical image segmentation and demonstrated expert-level performance. Due to the poor generalization abilities of the models in the deployment in different centres, common solutions, such as transfer learning and domain adaptation techniques, have been proposed to mitigate this issue. However, these solutions necessitate retraining the models with target domain data and annotations, which limits their deployment in clinical settings in unseen domains. We evaluated the performance of domain generalization methods on the task of MRI segmentation of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) by collecting a new dataset of 321 patients with manually annotated MRIs from two hospitals. We transformed the modalities of MRI, including T1WI, T2WI and CE-T1WI, from the spatial domain to the frequency domain using Fourier transform. To address the bottleneck of domain generalization in MRI segmentation of NPC, we propose a meta-learning approach based on frequency domain feature mixing. We evaluated the performance of MFNet against existing techniques for generalizing NPC segmentation in terms of Dice and MIoU. Our method evidently outperforms the baseline in handling the generalization of NPC segmentation. The MF-Net clearly demonstrates its effectiveness for generalizing NPC MRI segmentation to unseen domains (Dice = 67.59%, MIoU = 75.74% T1W1). MFNet enhances the model's generalization capabilities by incorporating mixed-feature meta-learning. Our approach offers a novel perspective to tackle the domain generalization problem in the field of medical imaging by effectively exploiting the unique characteristics of medical images.

Salvage neck surgery in recurrent nodal NPC: Do all patients require a comprehensive neck dissection in the modern MRI era?

OBJECTIVE: The standard treatment for regional failure in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is the radical neck dissection (RND). Our study sought to determine if magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may accurately predict nodal involvement to allow selected levels of neck dissection to be preserved. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We analysed retrospectively all NPC patients in our centre undergoing neck dissections as salvage therapy for nodal recurrence. Nodal involvement based on the preoperative MRI was assessed and compared with postoperative histopathology. METHODS: This is a retrospective study conducted on patients in our centre with recurrent NPC from February 2002 to February 2017. Patients were identified from the database of the otolaryngology oncology division at our institution. Of these, 28 patients met all our inclusion and exclusion criteria. We calculated sensitivity and specificity as well as average number of nodes per patient. RESULTS: In our study, we calculated the false negative and false positive rates of preoperative MRI neck by levels. Overall sensitivity of MRI picking up disease by level was 76% and specificity was 86%. CONCLUSION: Based on our study, we will be missing a total of 10 (7.1%) diseased neck levels in eight (28.5%) patients. MRI alone, therefore, does not provide enough information to allow safe selective preservation of neck levels in surgical salvage of neck recurrences in NPC.

Anatomical changes and dosimetric analysis of the neck region based on FBCT for nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients during radiotherapy.

BACKGROUND: The study aimed to investigate anatomical changes in the neck region and evaluate their impact on dose distribution in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) undergoing intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Additionally, the study sought to determine the optimal time for replanning during the course of treatment. METHODS: Twenty patients diagnosed with NPC underwent IMRT, with weekly pretreatment kV fan beam computed tomography (FBCT) scans in the treatment room. Metastasized lymph nodes in the neck region and organs at risk (OARs) were redelineation using the images from the FBCT scans. Subsequently, the original treatment plan (PLAN0) was replicated to each FBCT scan to generate new plans labeled as PLAN 1-6. The dose-volume histograms (DVH) of the new plans and the original plan were compared. One-way repeated measure ANOVA was utilized to establish threshold(s) at various time points. The presence of such threshold(s) would signify significant change(s), suggesting the need for replanning. RESULTS: Progressive volume reductions were observed over time in the neck region, the gross target volume for metastatic lymph nodes (GTVnd), as well as the submandibular glands and parotids. Compared to PLAN0, the mean dose (Dmean) of GTVnd-L significantly increased in PLAN5, while the minimum dose covering 95% of the volume (D95%) of PGTVnd-L showed a significant decrease from PLAN3 to PLAN6. Similarly, the Dmean of GTVnd-R significantly increased from PLAN4 to PLAN6, whereas the D95% of PGTVnd-R exhibited a significant decrease during the same period. Furthermore, the dose of bilateral parotid glands, bilateral submandibular glands, brainstem and spinal cord was gradually increased in the middle and late period of treatment. CONCLUSION: Significant anatomical and dosimetric changes were noted in both the target volumes and OARs. Considering the thresholds identified, it is imperative to undertake replanning at approximately 20 fractions. This measure ensures the delivery of adequate doses to target volumes while mitigating the risk of overdosing on OARs.

Infrasellar Nasopharyngeal Craniopharyngiomas: An Individual Participant Data Meta-Analysis and Review of the Literature.

BACKGROUND: Craniopharyngiomas are benign tumors of the anterior skull base arising from epithelial remnants of Rathke pouch. They mainly occur in the suprasellar space, can be incredibly debilitating, and remain difficult to resect as they frequently involve critical neurovascular structures. Although it is embryologically possible for craniopharyngiomas to arise extracranially along the entire migrational path of Rathke pouch, these remain exceedingly rare, especially among adults, and can be mistaken for nasopharyngeal cancer. As such, minimal data exist evaluating the management and outcomes of such lesions. We evaluated our institutional experience with purely infrasellar nasopharyngeal craniopharyngiomas and obtained individual patient data reported in the contemporary literature to better characterize the demographics, presentation, surgical management, and long-term outcomes of these lesions. METHODS: A systematic review of the literature was performed to identify previously published cases of purely infrasellar nasopharyngeal craniopharyngioma in 3 electronic databases: MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase, and Scopus. Search terms were "infrasellar craniopharyngioma" and "nasopharyngeal craniopharyngioma." RESULTS: We identified 25 cases, in which 72% of patients presented with symptoms of nasal obstruction, epistaxis, or headache. An endoscopic approach was performed in 40% of cases; 83.3% of all patients had gross total resection, with 60% having no recurrence at a median follow-up of 13 months. No postoperative complications were reported. Tumor location involving the cavernous sinus was associated with incomplete resection (100%) compared with tumors not involving the cavernous sinus (87%) (P = 0.033). CONCLUSIONS: While uncommon, infrasellar nasopharyngeal craniopharyngiomas appear to have better perioperative and long-term surgical outcomes than their suprasellar counterparts.

Imaging spectrum and complications of otogenic infections: insights into delayed diagnosis.

Skull base osteomyelitis (SBO) is a late manifestation of complicated otogenic infections that presents a diagnostic challenge. Delayed or missed diagnoses lead to high morbidity and mortality and can be attributed to non-specific symptoms, subtle early radiologic findings, radiologic mimicry of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), and under-recognition from clinician and radiologists. This pictorial review aims to emphasize on early imaging recognition and distinction between SBO and NPC.

Multimodality radiomics for tumor prognosis in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: The prognosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is challenging due to late-stage identification and frequently undetectable Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA. Incorporating radiomic features, which quantify tumor characteristics from imaging, may enhance prognosis assessment. PURPOSE: To investigate the predictive power of radiomic features on overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) in NPC. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective analysis of 183 NPC patients treated with chemoradiotherapy from 2010 to 2019 was conducted. All patients were followed for at least three years. The pretreatment CT images with contrast medium, MR images (T1W and T2W), as well as gross tumor volume (GTV) contours, were used to extract radiomic features using PyRadiomics v.2.0. Robust and efficient radiomic features were chosen using the intraclass correlation test and univariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis. They were then combined with clinical data including age, gender, tumor stage, and EBV DNA level for prognostic evaluation using Cox proportional hazard regression models with recursive feature elimination (RFE) and were optimized using 20 repetitions of a five-fold cross-validation scheme. RESULTS: Integrating radiomics with clinical data significantly enhanced the predictive power, yielding a C-index of 0.788 ± 0.066 to 0.848 ± 0.079 for the combined model versus 0.745 ± 0.082 to 0.766 ± 0.083 for clinical data alone (p<0.05). Multimodality radiomics combined with clinical data offered the highest performance. Despite the absence of EBV DNA, radiomics integration significantly improved survival predictions (C-index ranging from 0.770 ± 0.070 to 0.831 ± 0.083 in combined model versus 0.727 ± 0.084 to 0.734 ± 0.088 in clinical model, p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The combination of multimodality radiomic features from CT and MR images could offer superior predictive performance for OS, PFS, and DMFS compared to relying on conventional clinical data alone.

Cross-site prognosis prediction for nasopharyngeal carcinoma from incomplete multi-modal data.

Accurate prognosis prediction for nasopharyngeal carcinoma based on magnetic resonance (MR) images assists in the guidance of treatment intensity, thus reducing the risk of recurrence and death. To reduce repeated labor and sufficiently explore domain knowledge, aggregating labeled/annotated data from external sites enables us to train an intelligent model for a clinical site with unlabeled data. However, this task suffers from the challenges of incomplete multi-modal examination data fusion and image data heterogeneity among sites. This paper proposes a cross-site survival analysis method for prognosis prediction of nasopharyngeal carcinoma from domain adaptation viewpoint. Utilizing a Cox model as the basic framework, our method equips it with a cross-attention based multi-modal fusion regularization. This regularization model effectively fuses the multi-modal information from multi-parametric MR images and clinical features onto a domain-adaptive space, despite the absence of some modalities. To enhance the feature discrimination, we also extend the contrastive learning technique to censored data cases. Compared with the conventional approaches which directly deploy a trained survival model in a new site, our method achieves superior prognosis prediction performance in cross-site validation experiments. These results highlight the key role of cross-site adaptability of our method and support its value in clinical practice.

CT-based peritumoral radiomics nomogram on prediction of response and survival to induction chemotherapy in locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

PURPOSE: The study aims to harness the value of radiomics models combining intratumoral and peritumoral features obtained from pretreatment CT to predict treatment response as well as the survival of LA-NPC(locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma) patients receiving multiple types of induction chemotherapies, including immunotherapy and targeted therapy. METHODS: 276 LA-NPC patients (221 in the training and 55 in the testing cohort) were retrospectively enrolled. Various statistical analyses and feature selection techniques were applied to identify the most relevant radiomics features. Multiple machine learning models were trained and compared to build signatures for the intratumoral and each peritumoral region, along with a clinical signature. The performance of each model was evaluated using different metrics. Subsequently, a nomogram model was constructed by combining the best-performing radiomics and clinical models. RESULTS: In the testing cohort, the nomogram model exhibited an AUC of 0.816, outperforming the other models. The nomogram model's calibration curve showed good agreement between predicted and observed outcomes in both the training and testing sets. When predicting survival, the model's concordance index (C-index) was 0.888 in the training cohort and 0.899 in the testing cohort, indicating its robust predictive ability. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the combined nomogram model, incorporating radiomics and clinical features, outperformed other models in predicting treatment response and survival outcomes for LA-NPC patients receiving induction chemotherapies. These findings highlight the potential clinical utility of the model, suggesting its value in individualized treatment planning and decision-making.

Diagnosis of skull-base invasion by nasopharyngeal tumors on CT with a deep-learning approach.

PURPOSE: To develop a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to diagnose skull-base invasion by nasopharyngeal malignancies in CT images and evaluate the model's diagnostic performance. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We divided 100 malignant nasopharyngeal tumor lesions into a training (n = 70) and a test (n = 30) dataset. Two head/neck radiologists reviewed CT and MRI images and determined the positive/negative skull-base invasion status of each case (training dataset: 29 invasion-positive and 41 invasion-negative; test dataset: 13 invasion-positive and 17 invasion-negative). Preprocessing involved extracting continuous slices of the nasopharynx and clivus. The preprocessed training dataset was used for transfer learning with Residual Neural Networks 50 to create a diagnostic CNN model, which was then tested on the preprocessed test dataset to determine the invasion status and model performance. Original CT images from the test dataset were reviewed by a radiologist with extensive head/neck imaging experience (senior reader: SR) and another less-experienced radiologist (junior reader: JR). Gradient-weighted class activation maps (Grad-CAMs) were created to visualize the explainability of the invasion status classification. RESULTS: The CNN model's diagnostic accuracy was 0.973, significantly higher than those of the two radiologists (SR: 0.838; JR: 0.595). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis gave an area under the curve of 0.953 for the CNN model (versus 0.832 and 0.617 for SR and JR; both p < 0.05). The Grad-CAMs suggested that the invasion-negative cases were present predominantly in bone marrow, while the invasion-positive cases exhibited osteosclerosis and nasopharyngeal masses. CONCLUSIONS: This CNN technique would be useful for CT-based diagnosis of skull-base invasion by nasopharyngeal malignancies.

Design, Preclinical Evaluation, and Clinical Translation of 68Ga-FAPI-LM3, a Heterobivalent Molecule for PET Imaging of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma.

Extensive research has been conducted on radiolabeled fibroblast activation protein (FAP) inhibitors (FAPIs) and p-Cl-Phe-cyclo(d-Cys-Tyr-d-4-amino-Phe(carbamoyl)-Lys-Thr-Cys)d-Tyr-NH2 (LM3) peptides for imaging of FAP and somatostatin receptor 2 (SSTR2)-positive tumors. In this study, we designed and synthesized a FAPI-LM3 heterobivalent molecule radiolabeled with 68Ga and evaluated its effectiveness in both tumor xenografts and patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Methods: The synthesis of FAPI-LM3 was based on the structures of FAPI-46 and LM3. After radiolabeling with 68Ga, its dual-receptor-binding affinity was evaluated in vitro and in vivo. Preclinical studies, including small-animal PET and biodistribution evaluation, were conducted on HT-1080-FAP and HT-1080-SSTR2 tumor xenografts. The feasibility of 68Ga-FAPI-LM3 PET/CT in a clinical setting was evaluated in patients with NPC, and the results were compared with those of 18F-FDG. Results: 68Ga-FAPI-LM3 showed high affinity for both FAP and SSTR2. The tumor uptake of 68Ga-FAPI-LM3 was significantly higher than that of 68Ga-FAPI-46 and 68Ga-DOTA-LM3 in HT-1080-FAP-plus-HT-1080-SSTR2 tumor xenografts. In a clinical study involving 6 NPC patients, 68Ga-FAPI-LM3 PET/CT showed significantly higher uptake than did 18F-FDG in primary and metastatic lesions, leading to enhanced lesion detectability and tumor delineation. Conclusion: 68Ga-FAPI-LM3 exhibited FAPI and SSTR2 dual-receptor-targeting properties both in vitro and in vivo, resulting in improved tumor uptake and retention compared with that observed with monomeric 68Ga-FAPI and 68Ga-DOTA-LM3. This study highlights the clinical feasibility of 68Ga-FAPI-LM3 PET/CT for NPC imaging.

Early detection of nasopharyngeal carcinoma: performance of a short contrast-free screening magnetic resonance imaging.

BACKGROUND: Although contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) detects early-stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) not detected by endoscopic-guided biopsy (EGB), a short contrast-free screening MRI would be desirable for NPC screening programs. This study evaluated a screening MRI in a plasma Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-DNA NPC screening program. METHODS: EBV-DNA-screen-positive patients underwent endoscopy, and endoscopy-positive patients underwent EGB. EGB was negative if the biopsy was negative or was not performed. Patients also underwent a screening MRI. Diagnostic performance was based on histologic confirmation of NPC in the initial study or during a follow-up period of at least 2 years. RESULTS: The study prospectively recruited 354 patients for MRI and endoscopy; 40/354 (11.3%) endoscopy-positive patients underwent EGB. Eighteen had NPC (5.1%), and 336 without NPC (94.9%) were followed up for a median of 44.8 months. MRI detected additional NPCs in 3/18 (16.7%) endoscopy-negative and 2/18 (11.1%) EGB-negative patients (stage I/II, n = 4; stage III, n = 1). None of the 24 EGB-negative patients who were MRI-negative had NPC. MRI missed NPC in 2/18 (11.1%), one of which was also endoscopy-negative. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of MRI, endoscopy, and EGB were 88.9%, 91.1%, 34.8%, 99.4%, and 91.0%; 77.8%, 92.3%, 35.0%, 98.7%, and 91.5%; and 66.7%, 92.3%, 31.6%, 98.1%, and 91.0%, respectively. CONCLUSION: A quick contrast-free screening MRI complements endoscopy in NPC screening programs. In EBV-screen-positive patients, MRI enables early detection of NPC that is endoscopically occult or negative on EGB and increases confidence that NPC has not been missed.