•Artificial intelligence is used for assessing response to therapy in rectal cancer.•Textural features extraction from high resolution 3 T MR images.•Artificial intelligence model helps personalize ...therapeutic strategy.•Decisions curves analysis confirm clinical utility.
To develop and validate an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model based on texture analysis of high-resolution T2 weighted MR images able 1) to predict pathologic Complete Response (CR) and 2) to identify non-responders (NR) among patients with locally-advanced rectal cancer (LARC) after receiving neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT).
Fifty-five consecutive patients with LARC were retrospectively enrolled in this study. Patients underwent 3 T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) acquiring T2-weighted images before, during and after CRT. All patients underwent complete surgical resection and histopathology was the gold standard. Textural features were automatically extracted using an open-source software. A sub-set of statistically significant textural features was selected and two AI models were built by training a Random Forest (RF) classifier on 28 patients (training cohort). Model performances were estimated on 27 patients (validation cohort) using a ROC curve and a decision curve analysis.
Sixteen of 55 patients achieved CR. The AI model for CR classification showed good discrimination power with mean area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) of 0.86 (95% CI: 0.70, 0.94) in the validation cohort. The discriminatory power for the NR classification showed a mean AUC of 0.83 (95% CI: 0.71,0.92). Decision curve analysis confirmed higher net patient benefit when using AI models compared to standard-of-care.
AI models based on textural features of MR images of patients with LARC may help to identify patients who will show CR at the end of treatment and those who will not respond to therapy (NR) at an early stage of the treatment.
In ideal two-stage collimation systems, the secondary collimator–absorber should have its length sufficient to exclude practically the exit of halo particles with large impact parameters. In the UA9 ...experiments on the crystal assisted collimation of the SPS beam a 60 cm long tungsten bar is used as a secondary collimator–absorber which is insufficient for the full absorption of the halo protons. Multi-turn simulation studies of the collimation allowed to select the position for the beam loss monitor downstream the collimation area where the contribution of particles deflected by the crystal in channeling regime but emerging from the secondary collimator–absorber is considerably reduced. This allowed observation of a strong leakage reduction of halo protons from the SPS beam collimation area, thereby approaching the case with an ideal absorber.
Channeling is the confinement of the trajectory of a charged particle in a crystalline solid. Positively charged particles channeled between crystal planes oscillate with a certain oscillation ...length, which depends on particle energy. A crystal whose thickness is half the oscillation length for planar channeling may act as a mirror for charged particles. If the incident angle of the particle trajectory with the crystal plane is less than the critical angle for channeling, under-barrier particles undergo half an oscillation and exit the crystal with the reversal of their transverse momentum, i.e., the particles are “mirrored” by the crystal planes. Unlike the traditional scheme relying on millimeter-long curved crystals, particle mirroring enables beam steering in high-energy accelerators via interactions with micrometer-thin straight crystal. The main advantage of mirroring is the interaction with a minimal amount of material along the beam, thereby decreasing unwanted incoherent nuclear interactions. The effectiveness of the mirror effect for ultrarelativistic positive particles has been experimentally proven at external lines of CERN-SPS. The mirroring effect in a 26.5-μm-thick Si crystal has been studied in the experiment with a narrow beam of 400 GeV/c protons at the CERN-SPS. The reflection efficiency for a quasi-parallel beam is larger than 80%.
The trend of volume reflection parameters (deflection angle and efficiency) in a bent (110) silicon crystal has been investigated as a function of the crystal curvature with 400 GeV/c protons on the ...H8 beam line at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. This Letter describes the analysis performed at six different curvatures showing that the optimal radius for volume reflection is approximately 10 times greater than the critical radius for channeling. A strong scattering of the beam by the planar potential is also observed for a bend radius close to the critical one.
Deflection of 400 GeV/c protons by a short bent silicon crystal was studied at the CERN SPS. It was shown that the dechanneling probability increases while the dechanneling length decreases with an ...increase of incident angles of particles relative to the crystal planes. The observation of the dechanneling length reduction provides evidence of the particle population increase at the top levels of transverse energies in the potential well of the planar channels.
The interactions of 400 GeV protons with different sequences of bent silicon crystals have been investigated at the H8 beam line of the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. The multiple volume reflection ...of the proton beam has been studied in detail on a five-crystal reflector measuring an angular beam deflection theta = 52.96 +/- 0.14 microrad. The efficiency was found larger than 80% for an angular acceptance at the reflector entrance of 70 microrad, with a maximal efficiency value of epsilon = 0.90 +/- 0.01 +/- 0.03.
Experiments were performed at the CERN SPS with 120 GeV/c stored proton beams to assess the possibility of beam halo collimation assisted by bent crystals. A bent crystal was used to deflect ...horizontally by an angle of about 170 μrad the beam halo protons in channeling states directing them into a 60 cm long tungsten absorber. The halo loss rate due to nuclear inelastic interactions of protons in the aligned crystal was up to five times smaller than for its amorphous orientation. Channeled fractions, (75±4)% and (85±5)% for the two tested silicon crystals, were measured by intercepting the deflected beam with another collimator located between the crystals and the absorber. The pixel detector (MEDIPIX) installed in a Roman pot inside the beam pipe was used to obtain visual images of the deflected beam.
PDF
