Fully Automated Deep Learning System for Bone Age Assessment.

Skeletal maturity progresses through discrete phases, a fact that is used routinely in pediatrics where bone age assessments (BAAs) are compared to chronological age in the evaluation of endocrine and metabolic disorders. While central to many disease evaluations, little has changed to improve the tedious process since its introduction in 1950. In this study, we propose a fully automated deep learning pipeline to segment a region of interest, standardize and preprocess input radiographs, and perform BAA. Our models use an ImageNet pretrained, fine-tuned convolutional neural network (CNN) to achieve 57.32 and 61.40% accuracies for the female and male cohorts on our held-out test images. Female test radiographs were assigned a BAA within 1 year 90.39% and within 2 years 98.11% of the time. Male test radiographs were assigned 94.18% within 1 year and 99.00% within 2 years. Using the input occlusion method, attention maps were created which reveal what features the trained model uses to perform BAA. These correspond to what human experts look at when manually performing BAA. Finally, the fully automated BAA system was deployed in the clinical environment as a decision supporting system for more accurate and efficient BAAs at much faster interpretation time (<2 s) than the conventional method.

Contrast-enhanced CT quantification of the hepatic fractional extracellular space: correlation with diffuse liver disease severity.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether contrast-enhanced CT quantification of the hepatic fractional extracellular space (ECS) correlates with the severity of diffuse liver disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The cases of 70 patients without (46 men, 24 women; mean age, 59.1 years) and 36 patients with (23 men, 13 women; mean age, 63.1 years) cirrhosis who had undergone unenhanced and 10-minute delayed phase contrast-enhanced CT were retrospectively identified. By consensus one experienced radiologist and one trainee measured the CT attenuation of the liver and aorta to estimate the fractional ECS, defined as the ratio of the difference between the attenuation of the liver on 10-minute and unenhanced images to the difference between the attenuation of the aorta on 10-minute and unenhanced images multiplied by 1 minus the hematocrit. Findings were correlated with each patient's Model of End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score. RESULTS: The mean MELD score was higher in patients with than in those without cirrhosis (14.3 ± 7.3 versus 7.20 ± 2.4, p < 0.0001). The mean fractional ECS was significantly greater in patients with cirrhosis than in those without cirrhosis (41.0% ± 9.0% versus 23.8% ± 6.3%, p < 0.0001). The fractional ECS correlated with the MELD score (r = 0.572, p < 0.0001) and was predictive of cirrhosis with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.953 (p < 0.0001). The sensitivity and specificity of an expanded fractional ECS greater than 30% for the prediction of cirrhosis were 92% and 83%. Multivariate linear regression revealed that the fractional ECS is complementary to the MELD score as a predictor of cirrhosis (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: Noninvasive contrast-enhanced CT quantification of the fractional ECS correlates with the MELD score, an indicator of the severity of liver disease, and merits further study.

18F-5-fluorouracil dynamic positron emission tomography/computed tomography shows decreased tracer activity after bevacizumab in colorectal metastases.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of fluorine-18 (F)-5-fluorouracil (F-5-FU) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) to show differences in 5-FU activity in metastatic colorectal cancer before and after treatment with bevacizumab. METHODS: This was a pilot study of five patients with newly diagnosed and untreated metastatic colorectal adenocarcinoma. The presence of cancer was confirmed by histopathological analysis before enrollment. Patients underwent F-5-FU PET/CT scanning before treatment and at approximately 24 h postbevacizumab. PET/CT scanning consisted of a dynamic acquisition of images taken 0-20 min after injection of radiotracer. The degree of F-5-FU activity at the metastatic sites was assessed using visual interpretation and semiquantitative standardized uptake value analyses. RESULTS: The sizes of the metastatic lesions ranged from the smallest lesion measuring 3.04 × 1.50 cm to the largest measuring 4.19 × 2.76 cm. By drawing regions of interest, time-activity curves were generated at each tumor site and area under the curve (AUC) analyses were carried out. At baseline, during the first 5 min after F-5-FU injection the mean AUCtumor/AUCaorta ratio was 1.24 ± 0.30 (range, 0.424-2.14). Less than 24 h after the administration of bevacizumab, the AUCtumor/AUCaorta ratio decreased to 1.06 ± 0.32 (range, 0.23-2.13, P=0.04), which represented an average decline of 20.2% (range, 0.4-45%). Radiotracer uptake on the 5, 10, 15, and 20-min images did not show any significant change between baseline and posttreatment. Follow-up CT imaging showed stable tumor size in one patient and a decrease in metastasis size in the remaining four patients. CONCLUSION: In this pilot study of five patients with metastatic colorectal carcinoma, F-5-FU PET/CT scanning showed a significant perfusion-related decrease in tracer activity 24 h postbevacizumab.

High hamstring tendinopathy: MRI and ultrasound imaging and therapeutic efficacy of percutaneous corticosteroid injection.

OBJECTIVE: The goals of this study were to review the MRI and sonographic findings in patients diagnosed clinically with high hamstring tendinopathy and to evaluate the efficacy of ultrasound-guided corticosteroid injections in providing symptomatic relief. CONCLUSION: MRI is more sensitive than ultrasound in detecting peritendinous edema and tendinopathy at the proximal hamstring origin. Fifty percent of patients had symptomatic improvement lasting longer than 1 month after percutaneous corticosteroid injection, and 24% of patients had symptom relief for more than 6 months.

Molecular dynamics simulations of metalloproteinases types 2 and 3 reveal differences in the dynamic behavior of the S1' binding pocket.

Matrix Metalloproteinases (MMPs) are zinc-containing proteinases that are responsible for the metabolism of extracellular matrix proteins. Overexpression of MMPs has been associated with a wide range of pathological diseases such as arthritis, cancer, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. The excessive and unregulated activity of Matrix Metalloproteinases type 2 (MMP-2), also known as gelatinase A, has been identified in a numbers of cancer metastases. Several MMP inhibitors (MMPi) have been proposed in the literature aiming to interfere in the MMPs activity. In this work we performed long MD simulations in order to study the dynamical behavior of the binding pocket S1' in the apo forms of MMP type 2 and 3, and identify, at the molecular level, the structural properties relevant for the designing of specific inhibitor of MMP-2.

Acute and chronic morphine alters formalin pain in neonatal rats.

The present study tested the hypothesis that morphine exposure during the human developmental equivalent of the third trimester would alter inflammatory pain. This study examined whether acute or continuous opioid exposure in the neonatal rat alters formalin-induced nociception after 4 days of abstinence. Rats were exposed to a single acute administration of morphine on postnatal day 7 or 72 h of opioid infusion from postnatal days 5-7 via osmotic pump. When challenged with intraplantar formalin on postnatal day 11, rats exposed to acute or chronic morphine had increased phase II pain-associated behaviors. These findings suggest that neonatal morphine exposure may have unintended consequences on inflammatory pain.

Mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia upon acute opioid withdrawal in the neonatal rat.

Upon withdrawal from opioids many patients experience a heightened sensitivity to stimuli and an exaggerated pain response. We present evidence that neonatal rats exhibit allodynia and hyperalgesia on acute opiate withdrawal. Postnatal 7 and 21 day rats were used to approximately model a full term human infant and a human child, respectively. The opiate antagonist naloxone was used to precipitate withdrawal at 30 or 120 min after a single acute administration of morphine. Alternatively, rats were allowed to undergo spontaneous withdrawal. Behavioral manifestations of withdrawal syndrome were not observed when naloxone was administered at 30 min post-morphine, but were present when withdrawal was precipitated at 120 min. Spontaneous and precipitated withdrawal from a single acute administration of morphine produced mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia in postnatal day 7 rats and mechanical allodynia in postnatal day 21 rats. A higher dose of morphine was required to produce mechanical allodynia in postnatal day 21 versus 7 rats but this increase was independent of the analgesic efficacy of morphine at these two ages. The present work illustrates the need to examine the phenomenon of hypersensitivity upon opioid withdrawal in the human pediatric population.