Marnix C. Maas¹, Patrik Zámecnik¹, Moritz J. Schneider^2,3, Thomas Gaass^2,4, Thomas Benkert⁵, Julien Dinkel^2,4, and Tom W.J. Scheenen^1
1Medical Imaging, Radboudumc, Nijmegen, Netherlands, ²Comprehensive Pneumology Center, German Center for Lung Research (DZL), Munich, Germany, ³Antaros Medical AB, Mölndal, Sweden, ⁴Department of Radiology, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany, ⁵MR Application Predevelopment, Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany

Detection of lymph node (LN) metastases can be improved using Ferumoxtran-10, an ultrasmall superparamagnetic particles of iron oxide (USPIO) contrast agent . Commonly, T2* contrast is used to distinguish between normal LNs (high USPIO uptake, low signal) and metastases (low uptake, high signal). T1-weighted imaging may offer complementary information, but is challenging because of the strong T2* effects of the contrast agent. This work investigates whether ultrashort echotime (UTE) imaging with a stack-of-spirals sequence can mitigate this issue. High-resolution USPIO-enhanced T1-weighted UTE of the pelvis was achieved, and T1-mediated signal hyperintensities were indeed observed in LNs in patients with prostate cancer.

Xiaoling Gong¹, Daguang Wen², Yu Shen³, Mingtian Wei³, Xiaoxiao Zhang⁴, Xiaoyong Zhang⁴, Haoyu Huang⁴, Ziqiang Wang³, and Bing Wu^2
1Departments of Radiology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Cheng du, China, ²Departments of Radiology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, ³Department of Clinical, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, ⁴Philips Healthcare, China, Chengdu, China

Although 3D T2W imaging can make up for deficiencies, such as thick layer thickness, low spatial resolution and no retrospective post-processing, of 2D acquisitions, the long imaging time and uncertain diagnostic benefits have limited its clinical application. We compared the quality of 2D, 3D and CS sense accelerated 3D T2W imaging in patients with rectal cancer and found that 3D T2W imaging resembled CS sense accelerated 3D T2W imaging, both superior to 2D acquisitions, while the latter scanning faster than the former. It’s conclude that CS sense accelerated 3D T2W imaging can substitute the 2D acquisitions.

Martins Otikovs¹, Debbie Anaby², Orith Portnoy², Noam Nissan², Barak Rosenzweig², and Lucio Frydman^3,4
1Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, ²Sheba Medical Center, Ramat Gan, Israel, ³Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, ⁴Azrieli National Center for Brain Imaging, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) plays an important role in prostate cancer early detection and characterization. These analyses commonly rely on single shot EPI acquisitions, which can be associated with image distortions induced by field inhomogeneities induced by tissue / air interfaces. Herein we compare the faithfulness of EPI-derived DWI data, against that arising from Spatiotemporal Encoding (SPEN). In general, we find that SPEN delivers more faithful DW representations of the prostate anatomy within comparable scan times, without compromising SNR. SPEN can thus improve the contrast for prostate lesion detection, both in DW images and in calculated ADC maps.

Simona Turco¹, Hubert Blach¹, Catarina Dinis Fernandes¹, Jelle Barentsz², Stijn Heijmink ³, Hessel Wijkstra¹, and Massimo Mischi^1
1Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands, ²Radiology, Radboud university medical center, Nijmegen, Netherlands, ³Radiology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Prostate zonal segmentation is an important step for automated PCa diagnosis, MRI-guidedradiotherapy and focal treatment planning. Here we proposed a multi-channel U-Net for automatic prostate zonal segmentation, able to include multiple MRI sequences. Using a small, multicenter, multiparametric MRI dataset, we investigated its robustness towards the acquisition protocol and whether additional imaging sequences improve segmentation performance. Our results show that T2-weighted imaging alone is sufficient for successful prostate zonal segmentation. Despite using a small multicenter dataset, the models were robust towards the acquisition protocol and the performance was comparable to that obtained with larger datasets from a single institute.

Changjun Ma¹, Shifeng Tian², Lihua Chen², Nan Wang², Qingwei Song², and Ailian Liu^2
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian,China, China, ²Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China

At present, there are few reports on the application of imaging methods to predict the Her-2 gene expression of EC. This study will use the two functional sequences of IVIM and DCE-MRI to explore its preoperative prediction of the Her-2 gene expression of EC. Value, at the same time, discuss the correlation between the parameters of the two functional sequences.

Tiebao Meng¹, Weijing Zhang², Haoqiang He², Huiming Liu², Guixiao Xu², Fengting Zhu², Long Qian³, and Chuanmiao Xie^2
1Department of Radiology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China, ²Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China, ³GE Healthcare, Beijing, China

MUSE provides significantly better image quality in CC compared with C-DWI, with no significant difference in ADC.

Yuki Shibata¹, Daniel R. Crooks¹, Shun Kishimoto², Murali C. Krishna², and W. Marston Linehan^1
1Urologic Oncology Branch, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States, ²Radiation Biology Branch, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States

Human renal cell carcinomas (RCC) have a variety of pathologies and are known to have alterations in cellular metabolism, although many aspects remain unknown. Fumarate hydratase (FH)-deficient tumors exhibit a shift to aerobic glycolytic system due to several factors including loss and mutation of mitochondrial DNA. We investigated the partial pressure of oxygen, vascular permeability, and blood perfusion in FH-deficient UOK262 xenografts and a type 1 papillary RCC xenograft using EPRI and DCE-MRI. Despite low oxygen consumption rates in vitro, UOK262 xenografts showed a modest median pO₂ and increased hypoxic fraction as compared to a type 1 papillary RCC xenografts.

Kevin Sun Zhang¹, Adrian Schrader¹, Nils Netzer¹, Magdalena Görtz², Viktoria Schütz², Constantin Schwab³, Markus Hohenfellner², Heinz-Peter Schlemmer¹, and David Bonekamp^1
1Department of Radiology, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany, ²Department of Urology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany, ³Institute of Pathology, University of Heidelberg Medical Center, Heidelberg, Germany

Previously validated fully-automatic detection of prostate cancer by CNNs requires further prospective validation. Para-clinical case-by-case prospective prostate MRI assessment by residents was performed both before and after review of CNN probability maps superimposed on T2w images. A previously and retrospectively validated self-parametrizing nnUNet-architecture CNN trained on more than 1000 voxel-wise annotated prostate MRIs achieved ROC AUC of 0.89. Residents did not substantially change their assessment both at PI-RADS>=3 and >=4 decisions, however achieved excellent working points, indicating success of high reading capability conveyed at an expert center.

Abdullah Baş¹, Kübra Tan², Ayça Ersen Danyeli^3,4, M.Necmettin Pamir^5,6, Alp Dincer^4,7, Koray Ozduman^5,6, Ozge Can⁸, and Esin Ozturk-Isik^1
1Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Bogazici University, İstanbul, Turkey, ²Health Institutes of Turkey, Istanbul, Turkey, ³Department of Medical Pathology, Acibadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, İstanbul, Turkey, ⁴Center for Neuroradiological Applications and Reseach, Acibadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, İstanbul, Turkey, ⁵Center for Neuroradiological Applications and Reseach, Acibadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, Istanbul, Turkey, ⁶Department of Neurosurgery, Acibadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, İstanbul, Turkey, ⁷Department of Radiology, Acibadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, İstanbul, Turkey, ⁸Center for Neuroradiological Applications and Reseach Acibadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, Istanbul, Turkey

S100 protein expression is a relevant indicator of prognosis in meningiomas and it is more common in benign meningiomas. To our knowledge, a clinically feasible non-invasive method that preoperatively identifies S100 protein expression is not available. In this study, we proposed registration-free deep learning models to predict S100 expression non-invasively using T2-w MRI. The proposed hybrid deep learning model could predict S100 protein expression in meningiomas using T2-w MRI, with 91% accuracy on the validation set, and 83% accuracy on the test set. 

Sam Keaveney¹, Georgina Hopkinson¹, Erica Scurr¹, Maria-Alexandra Olaru², David Collins¹, Christina Messiou¹, Dow-Mu Koh¹, and Jessica Winfield^1
1Royal Marsden Hospital & Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, United Kingdom, ²Siemens Healthcare Ltd., Frimley, Camberley, United Kingdom

A short quality control acquisition was developed to detect hardware issues and receiver coil positioning errors in whole-body MRI (WB-MRI). Individual coil element images were reconstructed to investigate potential broken elements and coil positioning was assessed by comparison with images acquired using the integral body coil.

This approach was implemented in a group of healthy volunteers and patients with myeloma and successfully identified a previously undetected broken coil element. The expected signal difference between coil array and integral body coil images was defined and deviation from this expected profile was used to distinguish images acquired with deliberately imperfect coil set-ups.

Georgina Hopkinson¹, Christina Messiou^1,2, Erica Scurr¹, Martin F Kaiser^3,4, David J Collins^1,2, and Jessica M Winfield^1,2
1MRI Unit, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton, United Kingdom, ²Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging, The Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, United Kingdom, ³Department of Haematology, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton, United Kingdom, ⁴Division of Genetics and Epidemiology, The Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, United Kingdom

The influence of fat suppression methods and image reconstruction parameters on the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in uninvolved bone marrow was assessed in 18 patients with myeloma. ADC estimates from diffusion-weighted MRI acquired using spectral adiabatic inversion recovery (SPAIR) fat suppression were significantly lower than DW-MRI with short-tau inversion recovery (STIR). ADC estimates were significantly lower in data reconstructed using sum-of-squares coil-combination mode compared with adaptive combine, but there was no difference between additional reconstruction filters (raw, elliptical). These results show that differences between imaging protocols should be considered when comparing ADC estimates with established ranges and in multi-centre studies.