Objectives
To construct a preoperative model for survival prediction in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) patients using ultrasound (US) based radiographic‐radiomics signatures.
Methods
Between ...April 2010 and September 2015, 170 patients with ICC who underwent curative resection were retrospectively recruited. Overall survival (OS)‐related radiographic signatures and radiomics signatures based on preoperative US were built and assessed through a time‐dependent receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. A nomogram was developed based on the selected predictors from the radiographic‐radiomics signatures and clinical and laboratory results of the training cohort (n = 127), validated in an independent testing cohort (n = 43) by the concordance index (C‐index), and compared with the Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) cancer staging system as well as the radiographic and radiomics nomograms.
Results
The median areas under the curve of the radiomics signature and radiographic signature were higher than that of the TNM staging system in the testing cohort, although the values were not significantly different (0.76–0.82 versus 0.62, P = .485 and .264). The preoperative nomogram with CA 19‐9, sex, ascites, radiomics signature, and radiographic signature had C‐indexes of 0.72 and 0.75 in the training and testing cohorts, respectively, and it had significantly higher predictive performance than the 8th TNM staging system in the testing cohort (C‐index: 0.75 versus 0.67, P = .004) and a higher C‐index than the radiomics nomograms (0.75 versus 0.68, P = .044).
Conclusions
The preoperative nomogram integrated with the radiographic‐radiomics signature demonstrated good predictive performance for OS in ICC and was superior to the 8th TNM staging system.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death worldwide, and the biology of this cancer remains poorly understood. Recent evidence indicates that long non-coding ...RNAs (lncRNAs) are found to be dysregulated in a variety of cancers, including HCC. Taurine Up-regulated Gene 1 (TUG1), a 7.1-kb lncRNA, recruiting and binding to polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), is found to be disregulated in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). However, its clinical significance and potential role in HCC remain unclear.
In this study, expression of TUG1 was analyzed in 77 HCC tissues and matched normal tissues by using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). TUG1 expression was up-regulated in HCC tissues and the higher expression of TUG1 was significantly correlated with tumor size and Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage. Moreover, silencing of TUG1 expression inhibited HCC cell proliferation, colony formation, tumorigenicity and induced apoptosis in HCC cell lines. We also found that TUG1 overexpression was induced by nuclear transcription factor SP1 and TUG1 could epigeneticly repress Kruppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) transcription in HCC cells by binding with PRC2 and recruiting it to KLF2 promoter region.
Our results suggest that lncRNA TUG1, as a growth regulator, may serve as a new diagnostic biomarker and therapy target for HCC.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Harvesting the narrow bandgap excitons of charge‐transfer (CT) complexes for the achievement of near‐infrared (NIR) emission has attracted intensive attention for its fundamental importance and ...practical application. Herein, the triphenylene (TP)‐2,3,5,6‐tetrafluoro‐7,7,8,8‐tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4TCNQ) CT organic complex is designed and fabricated via the supramolecular self‐assembly process, which demonstrates the NIR emission with a maximum peak of 770 nm and a photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of 5.4%. The segregated stacking mode of TP‐F4TCNQ CT complex based on the multiple types of intermolecular interaction has a low CT degree of 0.00103 and a small counter pitch angle of 40° between F4TCNQ and TP molecules, which breaks the forbidden electronic transitions of CT state, resulting in the effective NIR emission. Acting as the promising candidates for the active optical waveguide in the NIR region beyond 760 nm, the self‐assembled TP‐F4TCNQ single‐crystalline organic microwires display an ultralow optical‐loss coefficient of 0.060 dB µm−1. This work holds considerable insights for the exploration of novel NIR‐emissive organic materials via an universal “cocrystal engineering” strategy.
Through changing mixed stacking into segregated stacking mode, triphenylene (TP)‐2,3,5,6‐tetrafluoro‐7,7,8,8‐tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4TCNQ) charge‐transfer (CT) complex demonstrates a low CT degree and a small counter pitch angle between TP and F4TCNQ molecules, benefiting for breaking the forbidden electronic transitions of CT state for realizing the near‐infrared emission with a maximum peak of 770 nm and a photoluminescence quantum yield of 5.4%.
Purpose
To develop an ultrasound (US)-based radiomics score for preoperative prediction of microvascular invasion (MVI) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Methods
Between January 1, 2012, and October ...31, 2017, a total of 482 HCC patients who underwent contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) were retrospectively reviewed. The study population was divided into a training cohort (
n
= 341) and a validation cohort (
n
= 141) based on a cutoff time of January 1, 2016. Radiomics features were extracted from the grayscale US images of HCC. After features selection, a radiomics score was developed from the training cohort. The incremental value of the radiomics score to the clinic-pathological factors for MVI prediction was assessed in the validation cohort with respect to discrimination, calibration, and clinical usefulness.
Results
The US-based radiomics score consisted of six selected features. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the radiomics score, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), and tumor size were independent predictors of MVI. The radiomics nomogram (based on the three factors) showed better performance for MVI detection (area under the curve AUC 0.7310.647, 0.815 than the clinical nomogram (based on AFP and tumor size) (0.634 0.543, 0.724) (
p
= 0.015). Both nomograms showed good calibration. Decision curve analysis demonstrated that in terms of clinical usefulness, the radiomics nomogram outperformed the clinical nomogram.
Conclusion
The US-based radiomics score was an independent predictor of MVI in HCC. Combining the radiomics score with clinical factors improved the prediction efficacy.
Key points
• Radiomics can be applied in US images.
• US-based radiomics score was an independent predictor of MVI.
• Radiomics nomogram incorporated with the radiomics score showed good performance for MVI prediction.
Organic photothermal cocrystals, integrating the advantages of intrinsic organic cocrystals and the fascinating photothermal conversion ability, hold attracted considerable interest in both basic ...science and practical applications, involving photoacoustic imaging, seawater desalination, and photothermal therapy, and so on. However, these organic photothermal cocrystals currently suffer individual cases discovered step by step, as well as the deep and systemic investigation in the corresponding photothermal conversion mechanisms is rarely carried out, suggesting a huge challenge for their further developments. Therefore, it is urgently necessary to investigate and explore the rational design and synthesis of high‐performance organic photothermal cocrystals for future applications. This review first and systematically summarizes the organic photothermal cocrystal in terms of molecular classification, the photothermal conversion mechanism, and their corresponding applications. The timely interpretation of the cocrystal photothermal effect will provide broad prospects for the purposeful fabrication of excellent organic photothermal cocrystals toward great efficiency, low cost, and multifunctionality.
Organic cocrystal simply self‐assembled from two or more different chemical species through noncovalent interactions has great superiority over monocomponent on their unpredicted and regulated chemicophysical properties, which provides a valuable guidance for the development of photothermal conversion. This minireview highlights the recent advances of organic photothermal cocrystals on the rational design, controlled synthesis, and advanced application.
Lesion localization and tracking are critical for accurate, automated medical imaging analysis. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) significantly enriches traditional B-mode ultrasound with contrast ...agents to provide high-resolution, real-time images of blood flow in tissues and organs. However, many trackers, designed primarily for natural RGB or B-mode ultrasound images, underutilize the extensive data from dual-screen enhanced images and fail to account for respiratory motion, thus facing challenges in achieving accurate target tracking. To address the existing challenges, we propose an adaptive-weighted dual mapping (ADMNet), an online tracking framework tailored for CEUS. Firstly, we introduced a novel Multimodal Atrous Attention Fusion (MAAF) module, innovatively designed to adapt the weightage between B-mode and enhanced images in dual-screen CEUS, reflecting the clinician's dynamic focus shifts between screens. Secondly, we proposed a Respiratory Motion Compensation (RMC) module to correct motion trajectory interferences due to respiratory motion, effectively leveraging temporal information. We utilized two newly established CEUS datasets, totaling 35,082 frames, to benchmark the ADMNet against various advanced B-mode ultrasound trackers. Our extensive experiments revealed that ADMNet achieves new state-of-the-art performance in CEUS tracking. Ablation studies and visualizations further underline the effectiveness of MAAF and RMC modules, demonstrating the promising potential of ADMNet in clinical CEUS tracing, thus providing novel research avenues in this field.
Background and Aim
This study aims to construct a strategy that uses assistance from artificial intelligence (AI) to assist radiologists in the identification of malignant versus benign focal liver ...lesions (FLLs) using contrast‐enhanced ultrasound (CEUS).
Methods
A training set (patients = 363) and a testing set (patients = 211) were collected from our institute. On four‐phase CEUS images in the training set, a composite deep learning architecture was trained and tuned for differentiating malignant and benign FLLs. In the test dataset, AI performance was evaluated by comparison with radiologists with varied levels of experience. Based on the comparison, an AI assistance strategy was constructed, and its usefulness in reducing CEUS interobserver heterogeneity was further tested.
Results
In the test set, to identify malignant versus benign FLLs, AI achieved an area under the curve of 0.934 (95% CI 0.890–0.978) with an accuracy of 91.0%. Comparing with radiologists reviewing videos along with complementary patient information, AI outperformed residents (82.9–84.4%, P = 0.038) and matched the performance of experts (87.2–88.2%, P = 0.438). Due to the higher positive predictive value (PPV) (AI: 95.6% vs residents: 88.6–89.7%, P = 0.056), an AI strategy was defined to improve the malignant diagnosis. With the assistance of AI, radiologists exhibited a sensitivity improvement of 97.0–99.4% (P < 0.05) and an accuracy of 91.0–92.9% (P = 0.008–0.189), which was comparable with that of the experts (P = 0.904).
Conclusions
The CEUS‐based AI strategy improved the performance of residents and reduced CEUS's interobserver heterogeneity in the differentiation of benign and malignant FLLs.
Materials exhibiting excitation wavelength‐dependent photoluminescence (Ex‐De PL) in the visible region have potential applications in bioimaging, optoelectronics and anti‐counterfeiting. Two ...multifunctional, chiral Au(NHC)2Au(CN)2 (NHC=(4R,5R)/(4S,5S)‐1,3‐dimethyl‐4,5‐diphenyl‐4,5‐dihydro‐imidazolin‐2‐ylidene) complex double salts display Ex‐De circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) in doped polymer films and in ground powder. Emission maxima can be dynamically tuned from 440 to 530 nm by changing the excitation wavelength. The continuously tunable photoluminescence is proposed to originate from multiple emissive excited states as a result of the existence of varied AuI⋅⋅⋅AuI distances in ground state. The steric properties of the NHC ligand are crucial to the tuning of AuI⋅⋅⋅AuI distances. An anti‐counterfeiting application using these two salts is demonstrated.
Ex‐De CPL: By modulating the strength of AuI⋅⋅⋅AuI and Coulombic interactions by adjusting steric hindrance of the ligand, together with the materials processing, the two chiral enantiomers of Au(NHC)2Au(CN)2 double salts in PMMA film or as ground powder exhibit mirror‐image excitation wavelength‐dependent photoluminescence (Ex‐De CPL).
The fire detection plays a critical role in the maintenance of public security. Previous approaches of early fire warning, based on smoke or temperature response must be set in the proximity of a ...fire. They cannot provide the additional information of fire location or size and are susceptible to complicated situations. It is still a big challenge to make rapid and accurate early fire warning in precombustion because of the lack of reliable alarm signals. Herein, a precursor molecular sensor (PMS) is designed and synthesized that can present the chemical structure transformation to form phthalocyanines (Pcs) and release a color change signal at about 180 °C, learning from the plant chlorophyll metabolism. Further, the PMS is assembled to an early fire warning component (EWC) and an intelligent image recognition algorithm is introduced for unburned fire detection. The EWC generates a colorful alarm within 20 s at 275 °C. Therefore, the facile PMS provides a reliable real‐time monitoring strategy to the early fire warning detection in precombustion.
A bioinspired color changing molecular sensor is designed to achieve early fire detection based on transformation of phthalonitrile to phthalocyanine, learning from the plant chlorophyll metabolism. An intelligent image recognition algorithm is applied and the sensor generates colorful alarm within 20 s at 275 °C. This study provides a reliable real‐time monitoring strategy to the early fire detection in precombustion.