In response to the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. has largely delegated implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to local governments on the state and county level. This staggered implementation combined with the heterogeneity of the U.S. complicates quantification the effect of NPIs on the reproductive rate of SARS-CoV-2. We describe a data-driven approach to quantify the effect of NPIs that relies on county-level similarities to specialize a Bayesian mechanistic model based on observed fatalities. Using this approach, we estimate change in reproductive rate, R_t, due to implementation of NPIs in 1,417 U.S. counties. We estimate that as of May 28th, 2020 1,177 out of the considered 1,417 U.S. counties have reduced the reproductive rate of SARS-CoV-2 to below 1.0. The estimated effect of any individual NPI, however, is different across counties. Stay-at-home orders were estimated as the only effective NPI in metropolitan and urban counties, while advisory NPIs were estimated to be effective in more rural counties. The expected level of infection predicted by the model ranges from 0 to 28.7% and is far from herd immunity even in counties with advanced spread. Our results suggest that local conditions are pertinent to containment and re-opening decisions.

ImportanceSarcopenia is an established prognostic factor in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC); the quantification of sarcopenia assessed by imaging is typically achieved through the skeletal muscle index (SMI), which can be derived from cervical skeletal muscle segmentation and cross-sectional area. However, manual muscle segmentation is labor intensive, prone to interobserver variability, and impractical for large-scale clinical use.ObjectiveTo develop and externally validate a fully automated image-based deep learning platform for cervical vertebral muscle segmentation and SMI calculation and evaluate associations with survival and treatment toxicity outcomes.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsFor this prognostic study, a model development data set was curated from publicly available and deidentified data from patients with HNSCC treated at MD Anderson Cancer Center between January 1, 2003, and December 31, 2013. A total of 899 patients undergoing primary radiation for HNSCC with abdominal computed tomography scans and complete clinical information were selected. An external validation data set was retrospectively collected from patients undergoing primary radiation therapy between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 2013, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The data analysis was performed between May 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023.ExposureC3 vertebral skeletal muscle segmentation during radiation therapy for HNSCC.Main Outcomes and MeasuresOverall survival and treatment toxicity outcomes of HNSCC.ResultsThe total patient cohort comprised 899 patients with HNSCC (median [range] age, 58 [24-90] years; 140 female [15.6%] and 755 male [84.0%]). Dice similarity coefficients for the validation set (n = 96) and internal test set (n = 48) were 0.90 (95% CI, 0.90-0.91) and 0.90 (95% CI, 0.89-0.91), respectively, with a mean 96.2% acceptable rate between 2 reviewers on external clinical testing (n = 377). Estimated cross-sectional area and SMI values were associated with manually annotated values (Pearson r = 0.99; P < .001) across data sets. On multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression, SMI-derived sarcopenia was associated with worse overall survival (hazard ratio, 2.05; 95% CI, 1.04-4.04; P = .04) and longer feeding tube duration (median [range], 162 [6-1477] vs 134 [15-1255] days; hazard ratio, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.48-0.89; P = .006) than no sarcopenia.Conclusions and RelevanceThis prognostic study’s findings show external validation of a fully automated deep learning pipeline to accurately measure sarcopenia in HNSCC and an association with important disease outcomes. The pipeline could enable the integration of sarcopenia assessment into clinical decision making for individuals with HNSCC.

PurposeTo develop and externally validate a scan-to-prediction deep-learning pipeline for noninvasive, MRI-based BRAF mutational status classification for pLGG.Materials and MethodsWe conducted a retrospective study of two pLGG datasets with linked genomic and diagnostic T2-weighted MRI of patients: Boston Children’s Hospital (development dataset, N=214), and Child Brain Tumor Network (CBTN) (external validation, N=112). We developed a deep learning pipeline to classify BRAF mutational status (V600E vs. fusion vs. wild-type) from whole-scan input via a two-stage process: 1) 3D tumor segmentation and extraction of axial tumor images, and 2) slice-wise, deep learning-based classification of mutational status. We investigated knowledge-transfer approaches to prevent model overfitting with a primary endpoint of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). To enhance model interpretability, we developed a novel metric, COMDist that quantifies the accuracy of model attention with respect to the tumor.ResultsA combination of transfer learning from a pretrained medical imaging-specific network and self-supervised label cross-training (TransferX) coupled with consensus logic yielded the highest AUC, taken as a weighted average across the three mutational classes, (0.82 [95% CI: 0.70-0.90], Accuracy: 77%) on internal validation and (0.73 [95% CI 0.68-0.88], Accuracy: 75%) on external validation. Training with TransferX also led to an AUC improvement of 17.7% and a COMDist Improvement of 6.42% over training from scratch on the development dataset.ConclusionTransfer learning and self-supervised cross-training improved classification performance and generalizability for noninvasive pLGG mutational status prediction in a limited data scenario.Summary StatementThe authors developed and externally validated an automated, scan-to-prediction deep learning pipeline that classifies BRAF Mutational status in pediatric low-grade gliomas directly from T2-Weighted MRI scans.Key ResultsAn innovative training approach combining self-supervision and transfer learning (“TransferX”) is developed to boost model performance in low data settings;TransferX enables the development of a scan-to-prediction pipeline for pediatric LGG mutational status (BRAF V600E, fusion, or wildtype) with high accuracy and mild performance degradation on external validation;An evaluation metric “COMDist” is proposed to increase interpretability and quantify the accuracy of the model’s attention around the tumor.

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PurposeSarcopenia is an established prognostic factor in patients diagnosed with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). The quantification of sarcopenia assessed by imaging is typically achieved through the skeletal muscle index (SMI), which can be derived from cervical neck skeletal muscle (SM) segmentation and cross-sectional area. However, manual SM segmentation is labor-intensive, prone to inter-observer variability, and impractical for large-scale clinical use. To overcome this challenge, we have developed and externally validated a fully-automated image-based deep learning (DL) platform for cervical vertebral SM segmentation and SMI calculation, and evaluated the relevance of this with survival and toxicity outcomes.Materials and Methods899 patients diagnosed as having HNSCC with CT scans from multiple institutes were included, with 335 cases utilized for training, 96 for validation, 48 for internal testing and 393 for external testing. Ground truth single-slice segmentations of SM at the C3 vertebra level were manually generated by experienced radiation oncologists. To develop an efficient method of segmenting the SM, a multi-stage DL pipeline was implemented, consisting of a 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) to select the middle slice of C3 section and a 2D U-Net to segment SM areas. The model performance was evaluated using the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) as the primary metric for the internal test set, and for the external test set the quality of automated segmentation was assessed manually by two experienced radiation oncologists. The L3 skeletal muscle area (SMA) and SMI were then calculated from the C3 cross sectional area (CSA) of the auto-segmented SM. Finally, established SMI cut-offs were used to perform further analyses to assess the correlation with survival and toxicity endpoints in the external institution with univariable and multivariable Cox regression.ResultsDSCs for validation set (n = 96) and internal test set (n = 48) were 0.90 (95% CI: 0.90 – 0.91) and 0.90 (95% CI: 0.89 - 0.91), respectively. The predicted CSA is highly correlated with the ground-truth CSA in both validation (r = 0.99,p< 0.0001) and test sets (r = 0.96,p< 0.0001). In the external test set (n = 377), 96.2% of the SM segmentations were deemed acceptable by consensus expert review. Predicted SMA and SMI values were highly correlated with the ground-truth values, with Pearson r ≥ 0.99 (p < 0.0001) for both the female and male patients in all datasets. Sarcopenia was associated with worse OS (HR 2.05 [95% CI 1.04 - 4.04], p = 0.04) and longer PEG tube duration (median 162 days vs. 134 days, HR 1.51 [95% CI 1.12 - 2.08], p = 0.006 in multivariate analysis.ConclusionWe developed and externally validated a fully-automated platform that strongly correlates with imaging-assessed sarcopenia in patients with H&N cancer that correlates with survival and toxicity outcomes. This study constitutes a significant stride towards the integration of sarcopenia assessment into decision-making for individuals diagnosed with HNSCC.SUMMARY STATEMENTIn this study, we developed and externally validated a deep learning model to investigate the impact of sarcopenia, defined as the loss of skeletal muscle mass, on patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) undergoing radiotherapy. We demonstrated an efficient, fully-automated deep learning pipeline that can accurately segment C3 skeletal muscle area, calculate cross-sectional area, and derive a skeletal muscle index to diagnose sarcopenia from a standard of care CT scan. In multi-institutional data, we found that pre-treatment sarcopenia was associated with significantly reduced overall survival and an increased risk of adverse events. Given the increased vulnerability of patients with HNSCC, the assessment of sarcopenia prior to radiotherapy may aid in informed treatment decision-making and serve as a predictive marker for the necessity of early supportive measures.

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A core principle of modern health care is the compliance of hygienic and aseptic techniques in areas that are sensitive to contamination through bacteria, dust, aerosols, and fallout, primarily in operating theatres or around patients with contagious diseases. Keeping track of potentially contaminated surfaces in an environment is a major concern, especially when protecting from COVID-19. This work proposes a novel concept in using 3D sensing technology to track human movement within an indoor area and identifying high-risk contaminated surfaces in real-time. It combines recent Augmented Reality display technology, which allows keeping track of decontaminated surfaces during the cleaning process using an interactive visualization method. The proposed concept of Clean- AR is implemented in a clinical environment used for observation in COVID-19 scenarios. We discuss key challenges and outline further research direction in effectively reducing the risk of contamination using the proposed concept.

In response to the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. has largely delegated implementation and rollback of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to local governments on the state and county level. This asynchronous response combined with the heterogeneity of the U.S. complicates quantification of the effect of NPIs on the reproductive ratio of SARS-CoV-2 on a national level. We describe a data-driven approach to quantify the effect of NPIs that relies on county-level similarities to specialize a Bayesian mechanistic model based on observed fatalities. Using this approach, we estimate the effect of NPIs on the reproductive ratio R_t in 1,904 U.S. counties incorporating implementation, subsequent rollback, and mask mandate efficacy. We estimate that at some point before Aug 2nd, 2020, 1,808 out of the considered 1,904 U.S. counties had reduced the reproductive ratio of SARS-CoV-2 to below 1.0. However, on Aug 2nd, the reproductive ration remained below that threshold for only 702 counties. The estimated effect of any individual NPI is different across counties. Public school closings were estimated to be effective in metropolitan, urban, and suburban counties, while advisory NPIs were estimated to be effective in more rural counties. The cumulative prevalence predicted by the model ranges from 0 to 58.6% across the counties examined. The median is 2.6% while the 25th and 75th percentile are 1.3% and 44.6% respectively, indicating that most counties are far from herd immunity. Our results suggest that local conditions, including socioeconomic, demographic and infrastructural factors, in addition to the cumulative prevalence are pertinent to containment and re-opening decisions.