Objective To investigate the imaging features of perivascular epithelioid cell tumor of liver (PEComa),and to improve the diagnostic level of the disease. Methods A retrospective analysis of imaging manifestations was performed on 11 cases of hepatic hemangioma confirmed by surgery and pathology. All patients underwent CT and MRI examination before PET/CT examination ,then received operation. Results Eleven cases were solitary hepatic lesions ,10 of which were located in the right lobe of the liver ,and 1 in the left. The lesions were round or quasi-circular and the diameter ranged from about 13.5cm to about 1.8 cm,with an average of 5.7 cm. CT plain scanning showed that the liver was slightly lower density ,with clear boundary. The smaller lesions were homogeneous density,while the larger ones were not,and the lower density area was visible. Enhancement of peripheral lesions in the arterial phase was enhanced. The lesions in the portal vein were not uniformly enhanced , and visible separation was found in large lesions. In the delay phase ,the lesions were significantly decreased or slightly lower. MRI plain scan showed the lesion T1WI showed moderate signal or slightly low signal ,and large lesion signal was not uniform,and T2WI lesions showed slightly high signal while DWI lesions high signal and the enhanced features were similar to those of CT. PET/CT examination showed that visible radioactive uptake of abnormal concentration or uneven concentration were found in lesions with diameter larger than 3.0 cm,and the maximum SUV value ranged from 12.2 to 3.6,with an average value of 5.7. Lesions with diameter less than 3.0 cm showed a slight concentration of radioactive uptake and the highest SUV value was 4.7,with an average value of 2.9. The only 11.8 cm lesion showed no significant radioactivity ,which was as the same as that of normal liver tissue. Delayed PET/CT imaging(1 hour)showed that SUV values of all lesions were decreased in varying degrees. Conclusion PET/CT imaging of perivascular epithelioid cell tumor of liver has its characteristics. The combina-tion of PET/CT imaging and routine imaging examination will benefit the improvement of diagnosis level obviously.

Objective:To investigate the human cytomegalovirus(HCMV)infection and hearing impairment in infants with congenital and perinatal diseases of the Bo′ai Hospital in Zhongshan City, and to explore the risk factors of hearing impairment and clinical outcomes.Methods:A total of 243 cases of infants with congenital and perinatal HCMV infection were collected from Bo′ai Hospital from January 2016 to December 2018.Clinical data and brainstem auditory evoked potential(BAEP)results were analyzed retrospectively.Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the risk factors of hearing impairment.The children with hearing loss were followed up in out-patient.Results:Positive rates of congenital and perinatal HCMV infection in infants were 4.56%(121/2654), 2.76%(74/2686)and 3.15%(85/2701)from 2016 to 2018 in our hospital respectively.In 243 cases, there were 107 cases with normal hearing(44%), 33 cases with suspicious hearing impairment(14%)and 103 cases with hearing impairment(42%). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the age less than 1 month( P=0.034)and CMV-DNA positive( P=0.003)were independent risk factors for hearing impairment.The manifestations of hearing impairment were various.Twenty cases with suspected hearing impairment were not treated with ganciclovir, in which 19 cases BAEP became normal.Sixty-seven cases with hearing impairment were followed up, of whom 47 cases received standardized ganciclovir antiviral therapy: 30 cases returned to normal, and 12 cases improved, and 3 cases showed no significant changes, and 2 cases aggravated.Twenty cases did not received the antiviral therapy: 5 cases returned to normal, and 8 cases improved, and 3 cases showed no significant changes, and 4 cases aggravated. Conclusion:There was a high rate of HCMV infection of congenital and perinatal infants in our hospital.Infected infants have a higher proportion of hearing impairment.Infants less than 1 month and CMV-DNA positive are more likely to suffer from hearing impairment.It can be considered for clinical observation for the cases with slightly elevated hearing threshold.Standardized ganciclovir antiviral therapy has obvious effect on hearing improvement.

Objective:To explore the predictive value of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT radiomics for the programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) expression level in lung adenocarcinoma patients. Methods:A total of 101 patients (43 males, 58 females; median age 60 years) with histologically confirmed lung adenocarcinoma who received pre-treatment 18F-FDG PET/CT from January 2017 to January 2019 in Peking University Cancer Hospital were included retrospectively. There were 44 patients with positive PD-L1 by immunohistochemical assays, and 57 with PD-L1 negative. Patients were assigned to a training set ( n=71) and a validation set ( n=30). Clinical data, PET/CT radiomics parameters, conventional metabolic parameters, and observed CT characteristics of these patients were included in the models. The filter method and embedded method were used in feature selection. Models based on logistic regression, random forest, XGBoost and Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) were trained and evaluated, and the optimal parameters to predict the PD-L1 expression as well as the area under curve (AUC) were attained. Results:All models had predictive ability in the prediction of PD-L1 expression, while LightGBM was more powerful than the others, with the precision for positive and negative predictions of 0.85 and 0.76, respectively. Incorporating clinical data and data derived from thin-section CT images (clinical data+ CT) into the LightGBM, the precision, recall and F1-score for positive and negative patients were 0.71, 0.67, 0.69 and 0.69, 0.73, 0.72, respectively, with the accuracy of 0.70 and the AUC of 0.79. As for clinical data+ PET, the precision, recall and F1-score for positive and negative patients were 0.79, 0.73, 0.76 and 0.75, 0.80, 0.77, respectively, with the accuracy of 0.77 and the AUC of 0.80. As for clinical data+ CT+ PET, the precision, recall and F1-score for positive and negative patients were 0.85, 0.73, 0.79 and 0.76, 0.87, 0.81, respectively, with the accuracy of 0.80 and the AUC of 0.83. Features with significant importance in the model (clinical data+ CT+ PET) were as follows: maximum standardized uptake value (SUV max), peak of standardized uptake value (SUV peak), CT_shape_Maximum2DDiameterSlice, PET_shape_Elongation, PET_gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM)_Correlation, etc. Conclusions:Incorporating clinical data, PET/CT radiomics features and conventional metabolic parameters, the PD-L1 expression can be effectively predicted, which help to assist the selection of patients who may benefit from the immunotherapy.

BACKGROUNDThoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) is an emerging treatment modality, which has been rapidly embraced by clinicians treating thoracic aortic disease. However, the clinical manifestations of systemic inflammatory response after TEVAR as post-implantation syndrome (PIS) resemble the perioperative infection. This study aimed to evaluate changes and diagnostic value of procalcitonin (PCT) and other traditional inflammatory markers for infections after TEVAR.

METHODSWe conducted a prospective clinical study that enrolled 162 consecutive aortic dissection cases, who underwent TEVAR in our institution between July 2011 and November 2012. The PCT, C-response protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and blood routine examination were monitored before the operation and on days 1, 2, 3 and 5 after the operation. The diagnosis of infection was confirmed by the infection control committee with reference to Hospital Acquired Infection Diagnostic Criteria Assessment, released by the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China.

RESULTSPost endovascular repair of thoracic aorta, PCT changes significantly at different time points (χ(2) = 13.225, P = 0.021), without significant difference between the PIS group and the control group (0.24 ± 0.04 vs.0.26 ± 0.10, P = 0.804). PCT values were significantly higher in the first day after TEVAR than the preoperative levels (0.18 ± 0.03 vs. 0.11 ± 0.02, P < 0.001). Compared with PIS patients, the level of PCT, CRP, White blood cell (WBC) and neutrophil (NEU) in the infection patients elevated significantly (relatively χ(2) = 6.062, P = 0.048; χ(2) = 6.081, P = 0.048; χ(2) = 11.030, P = 0.004; χ(2) = 14.632, P = 0.001). According to the ROC analysis, the PCT levels in the first day after TEVAR (AUC = 0.785, P = 0.012) had better predictive values of infection than WBC, NEU CRP and ESR (AUC = 0.720, P = 0.040; AUC = 0.715, P = 0.045; AUC = 0.663, P = 0.274; AUC = 0.502, P = 0.991). The best predictive index was the changes of PCT between preoperative and postoperative (PCT), which possess AUC as 0.803 (P = 0.014). And PCT = 0.055 could be considered as an infection diagnosis cutoff value with a sensitivity of 83.3% and specificity 69.0%.

CONCLUSIONSPCT provides better diagnostic value of infection compared with other inflammatory markers. The potential applications of PCT in differential diagnosis of PIS and infection after percutaneous TEVAR deserve further studies.

Adult ; Aged ; Blood Sedimentation ; C-Reactive Protein ; metabolism ; Calcitonin ; metabolism ; Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide ; Diagnosis, Differential ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Prospective Studies ; Protein Precursors ; metabolism ; Vascular Surgical Procedures

A number of studies have indicated that disorders of consciousness result from multifocal injuries as well as from the impaired functional and anatomical connectivity between various anterior forebrain regions. However, the specific causal mechanism linking these regions remains unclear. In this study, we used spectral dynamic causal modeling to assess how the effective connections (ECs) between various regions differ between individuals. Next, we used connectome-based predictive modeling to evaluate the performance of the ECs in predicting the clinical scores of DOC patients. We found increased ECs from the striatum to the globus pallidus as well as from the globus pallidus to the posterior cingulate cortex, and decreased ECs from the globus pallidus to the thalamus and from the medial prefrontal cortex to the striatum in DOC patients as compared to healthy controls. Prediction of the patients' outcome was effective using the negative ECs as features. In summary, the present study highlights a key role of the thalamo-basal ganglia-cortical loop in DOCs and supports the anterior forebrain mesocircuit hypothesis. Furthermore, EC could be potentially used to assess the consciousness level.
Adult ; Bayes Theorem ; Connectome ; Consciousness Disorders ; diagnostic imaging ; physiopathology ; Female ; Humans ; Machine Learning ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Neural Pathways ; diagnostic imaging ; physiopathology ; Prognosis ; Prosencephalon ; diagnostic imaging ; physiopathology ; Young Adult