A Review of Ultrasound-Mediated Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy.

Over the past decade, immunotherapy has emerged as a major modality in cancer medicine. However, despite its unprecedented success, immunotherapy currently benefits only a subgroup of patients, may induce responses of limited duration and is associated with potentially treatment-limiting side effects. In addition, responses to immunotherapeutics are sometimes diminished by the emergence of a complex array of resistance mechanisms. The efficacy of immunotherapy depends on dynamic interactions between tumour cells and the immune landscape in the tumour microenvironment. Ultrasound, especially in conjunction with cavitation-promoting agents such as microbubbles, can assist in the uptake and/or local release of immunotherapeutic agents at specific target sites, thereby increasing treatment efficacy and reducing systemic toxicity. There is also increasing evidence that ultrasound and/or cavitation may themselves directly stimulate a beneficial immune response. In this review, we summarize the latest developments in the use of ultrasound and cavitation agents to promote checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy.

Digital Omicron detection using unscripted voice samples from social media.

The success of artificial intelligence in clinical environments relies upon the diversity and availability of training data. In some cases, social media data may be used to counterbalance the limited amount of accessible, well-curated clinical data, but this possibility remains largely unexplored. In this study, we mined YouTube to collect voice data from individuals with self-declared positive COVID-19 tests during time periods in which Omicron was the predominant variant1,2,3, while also sampling non-Omicron COVID-19 variants, other upper respiratory infections (URI), and healthy subjects. The resulting dataset was used to train a DenseNet model to detect the Omicron variant from voice changes. Our model achieved 0.85/0.80 specificity/sensitivity in separating Omicron samples from healthy samples and 0.76/0.70 specificity/sensitivity in separating Omicron samples from symptomatic non-COVID samples. In comparison with past studies, which used scripted voice samples, we showed that leveraging the intra-sample variance inherent to unscripted speech enhanced generalization. Our work introduced novel design paradigms for audio-based diagnostic tools and established the potential of social media data to train digital diagnostic models suitable for real-world deployment.

Image-Guided Robotics for Standardized and Automated Biopsy and Ablation.

Image-guided robotics for biopsy and ablation aims to minimize procedure times, reduce needle manipulations, radiation, and complications, and enable treatment of larger and more complex tumors, while facilitating standardization for more uniform and improved outcomes. Robotic navigation of needles enables standardized and uniform procedures which enhance reproducibility via real-time precision feedback, while avoiding radiation exposure to the operator. Robots can be integrated with computed tomography (CT), cone beam CT, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound and through various techniques, including stereotaxy, table-mounted, floor-mounted, and patient-mounted robots. The history, challenges, solutions, and questions facing the field of interventional radiology (IR) and interventional oncology are reviewed, to enable responsible clinical adoption and value definition via ergonomics, workflows, business models, and outcome data. IR-integrated robotics is ready for broader adoption. The robots are coming!