Assessment of Nonmass Lesions Detected with Screening Breast US Based on Mammographic Findings Open Access 

Radiology, published 11/5/24 | Estimated Read Time: 25 minutes

In a multicenter study of 993 breast ultrasound nonmass lesions (NMLs), researchers identified four features significantly associated with malignancy: calcifications (PPV 44%), segmental distribution (PPV 22.9%), posterior shadowing (PPV 22%), and mixed echogenicity (PPV 16.6%), with strong interreader agreement (Fleiss κ ≥ 0.63). The study revealed a stark contrast in malignancy rates between NMLs with positive mammogram findings (28.8%) versus negative mammograms (2.8%).

Ultrasound-guided interventions in elite soccer players Open Access 

Skeletal Radiology, published 11/1/24 | Estimated Read Time: 25 minutes

Comprehensive review examines the evolving role of ultrasound-guided injections in elite soccer, where PRP treatment for muscle injuries demonstrated shortened return-to-play time (22.4 vs 25.8 days) and fewer missed games (1.7 vs 2.7) compared to conventional treatment. While the review covers multiple injectates including steroids, hyaluronic acid, and prolotherapy across various anatomical sites, the authors note limited high-quality evidence for many treatments, with 45% of professional players receiving injections during their careers and approximately 70% specifically receiving steroid injections, raising concerns about long-term joint health.

Sex-specific Associations between Left Ventricular Remodeling at MRI and Long-term Cardiovascular Risk

Radiology, published 11/5/24 | Estimated Read Time: 20 minutes

Landmark 10-year cardiac MRI study of 1,495 low-to-intermediate risk participants, researchers uncovered that cardiovascular risk manifests differently between sexes: men in the highest quartile of left ventricular mass showed a 18.2% event rate (HR 3.2, 95% CI: 1.5-7.0) versus 7.0% in the lowest quartile, while women's risk was better predicted by left ventricular mass-to-volume ratio with a 13.4% event rate (HR 2.3, 95% CI: 1.1-4.9) in the highest quartile versus 5.0% in the lowest. While this research reveals promising sex-specific cardiac MRI markers for early cardiovascular risk assessment, the study's generalizability is limited by its predominantly White population and inclusion criterion of above-median B-type natriuretic peptide levels.

Imaging of peritoneal metastases of ovarian and colorectal cancer: joint recommendations of ESGAR, ESUR, PSOGI, and EANM Open Access 

European Radiology, published 11/5/24 | Estimated Read Time: 25 minutes

Expert consensus guidelines reveal MRI with diffusion-weighted imaging outperforms CT and PET/CT for detecting peritoneal metastases, with CT showing only 68% sensitivity and particularly poor detection (11%) for lesions under 5 mm, while consistently underestimating surgical Peritoneal Cancer Index by 12-33%. In both ovarian and colorectal cancer patients, this underestimation by CT leads to unexpected surgical complications in up to 40% of cases, highlighting the need for more accurate pre-surgical staging with MRI.

Multimodal MRI changes associated with non-motor symptoms of rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder in Parkinson’s disease patients

Neuroradiology, published 10/30/24 | Estimated Read Time: 25 minutes

New MRI research comparing 33 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with 21 PD patients with REM sleep behavior disorder (PD-RBD) reveals the PD-RBD group exhibits significantly more extensive brain changes, including greater grey matter atrophy in the putamen and insula, and reduced functional connectivity in the default mode network (p<0.05 FWE-corrected). The study found a notable negative correlation between left posterior cingulate cortex activity and depression scores (HAMD-24) in PD-RBD patients, though results are limited by the small single-center sample and reliance on questionnaires rather than polysomnography for RBD diagnosis.

Complications of Deep Venous Stenting and Their Management Open Access 

Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology, published 11/4/24 | Estimated Read Time: 15 minutes

While iliofemoral and inferior vena cava stenting show low complication rates in clinical trials (1.2-6.5% serious adverse events), this comprehensive review suggests real-world rates may be higher, with stent migration occurring in 0.17% of cases using dedicated venous stents. The authors emphasize that most complications, from minor access site bleeds to potentially fatal cardiac events, are preventable through proper patient selection and technique, recommending stenting only for fixed stenoses >60% and emphasizing the importance of early duplex ultrasound surveillance for identifying at-risk stents.

Survival Outcomes of Radiofrequency Ablation for Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma from the SEER Database: Comparison with Radiotherapy and Resection

Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology, published 11/2/24 | Estimated Read Time: 20 minutes

Landmark SEER database study (2000-2020) demonstrates that for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma tumors ≤3 cm, radiofrequency ablation achieves comparable survival outcomes to surgical resection (5-year OS: 41.2% vs 52.0%, p=0.262), with both significantly outperforming radiotherapy. Post-2010 cases showed markedly improved outcomes (median OS: 32 vs 21 months, HR: 0.50 [95%CI: 0.33-0.75], p=0.001), though the study was limited by lack of data on ablation technique specifics, tumor location, and concurrent treatments.

Percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage in patients with cholestasis following liver transplantation Open Access 

Abdominal Radiology, published 11/5/24 | Estimated Read Time: 15 minutes

Study of 56 liver transplant patients shows percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage (PTBD) achieves 98% technical success for post-transplant biliary strictures, with anastomotic strictures showing significantly lower complication rates than non-anastomotic strictures (22.6% vs 67.5%, p<0.05). The research demonstrates that achieving internal drainage on first attempt was associated with markedly better 12-month survival (92.9% vs 67.9%, p=0.018).

CT-guided Coaxial Lung Biopsy: Number of Cores and Association with Complications

Radiology, published 11/5/24 | Estimated Read Time: 20 minutes

Study of 827 CT-guided coaxial lung biopsies found no association between the number of core samples (1-12 cores, median 4) and complications, with rates remaining stable for pneumothorax (20.7%), chest tube placement (3.9%), perilesional hemorrhage (42.7%), and hemoptysis (2.4%) regardless of samples taken. While the single-center retrospective design warrants further validation, this well-powered study challenges previous smaller studies and suggests radiologists can safely obtain additional tissue samples needed for modern genomic testing, though patients with emphysema showed significantly higher risk for chest tube insertion (coefficient 1.30, P=.007).

Percutaneous thermal ablation in hepatocellular carcinoma patients with and without TIPS

Abdominal Radiology, published 11/2/24 | Estimated Read Time: 20 minutes

Case-control study comparing thermal ablation outcomes in TIPS versus non-TIPS patients with HCC, researchers found comparable 1-year overall survival (97% vs. 94%, p=0.52) and progression-free survival (68% vs. 57%, p=0.35), suggesting TIPS presence should not contraindicate ablation treatment. Despite theoretical concerns about vascular changes and heat-sink effects, complication rates were similar between groups (8% vs. 6%, p=0.69), and notably, no local recurrence was observed in the 4 cases where tumors were within 10 mm of TIPS. There were significant baseline differences in prior treatments (19% vs. 67%, p<0.001).

A critical comparative study of the performance of three AI-assisted programs for bone age determination Open Access 

European Radiology, published 11/5/24 | Estimated Read Time: 15 minutes

Independent comparison of three CE-certified AI bone age assessment tools, BoneXpert, PANDA, and BoneView all achieved exceptional correlation with expert readers (R² ≥ 0.98) and demonstrated lower inter-reader variability than human experts (SD 0.54 vs 0.62 years, p < 0.01). While BoneXpert led in overall performance (RMSE 0.62 years, 2.3% dropout), PANDA showed slight advantages in the core clinical age range of 4.8-17.0 years (RMSE 0.65 years, no dropouts).

A Stacked Multimodality Model Based on Functional MRI Features and Deep Learning Radiomics for Predicting the Early Response to Radiotherapy in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Academic Radiology, published 11/3/24 | Estimated Read Time: 25 minutes

Stacked machine learning model combining MRI-based deep learning radiomics, functional imaging, and clinical indicators has achieved exceptional accuracy (AUC: 0.984 training, 0.936 internal validation, 0.959 external validation) in predicting early radiotherapy response for nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients across a cohort of 316 patients from two hospitals. By integrating XGBoost-based radiomics features, KNN-based deep learning features, and functional MRI parameters (ADC and TBF), the model outperformed traditional predictive methods and could help identify radiation-resistant patients before treatment, though the study's retrospective design and need for larger multi-institutional validation are notable limitations.

Unbiased and reproducible liver MRI-PDFF estimation using a scan protocol-informed deep learning method

European Radiology, published 11/5/24 | Estimated Read Time: 15 minutes

VET-Net, is a deep learning method that accurately estimates liver fat content (PDFF) from MRI scans with a remarkably low bias of -0.55% across different scanner manufacturers and protocols - processing images 97x faster than conventional methods (0.16 vs 15.58 seconds per slice). The method demonstrates robust reproducibility with RDCs of 1.71% and 1.04% for right and left hepatic lobes respectively, while maintaining high correlation with standard six-echo protocols even when using reduced three-echo imaging (R² = 0.98 for right hepatic lobe). However, performance was notably diminished in cases with high liver iron content, indicating a key limitation in patients with concomitant iron overload.

Artificial intelligence in abdominal and pelvic ultrasound imaging: current applications Open Access

Abdominal Radiology, published 11/2/24 | Estimated Read Time: 25 minutes

In a comprehensive analysis of 57 studies, researchers highlight the current landscape of AI in abdominal/pelvic ultrasound imaging, where algorithms have achieved impressive results including 0.996 AUC for liver steatosis detection and 97.8% accuracy for trauma assessment across 4,925 videos. Despite these promising outcomes, the review reveals critical gaps in methodology: only one study was prospectively validated, just 25% (14/57) were multi-center studies, and of 692 FDA-approved AI/ML algorithms, only 17 were cleared for ultrasound applications - highlighting the significant divide between research results and clinical implementation.

Automated anonymization of radiology reports: comparison of publicly available natural language processing and large language models

European Radiology, published 10/31/24 | Estimated Read Time: 15 minutes

Publicly available Natural Language Processing (NLP) models can achieve perfect (F1 score: 1.00) anonymization of sensitive data in radiology reports while processing each report in just 2.4 seconds, significantly outperforming offline LLaMa-2 which missed 68% of dates and deleted essential medical information in 10% of reports. In head-to-head testing on 100 chest CT reports, the accuracy-optimized NLP model successfully removed all instances of dates (n=333), medical record numbers (n=6), and accession numbers (n=92) while preserving all clinical content, suggesting a promising path for HIPAA-compliant automation of data sharing - though validation beyond the single-institution breast cancer cohort is still needed.

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