Hypertrophic Pachymeningitis (HP) denotes inflammation and thickening of the dura mater that can be idiopathic or secondary to a wide variety of conditions. Clinically, HP can present as debilitating headaches and cranial nerve defects but in other cases may be completely asymptomatic. We aimed to determine the relative incidence of different etiologies of HP and compare their associated imaging findings. Additionally, we sought to compare the clinical features of the underlying syndromes. We retrospectively examined twenty-two consecutive cases of HP seen in a single practitioner neurology practice over a ten-year time period. The most common etiologies were idiopathic HP and neurosarcoidosis. No imaging features were completely specific to any etiology. Nonetheless, idiopathic HP typically demonstrated diffuse regular enhancement whereas neurosarcoidosis was more likely to display a nodular enhancement pattern. Headache and cranial neuropathies were the most common clinical presentation. HP symptoms were often responsive to steroids but complete responses were rare. HP is a diagnostic challenge without specific findings on minimally or non-invasive diagnostic studies. Biopsy is often required and serves as the basis for effective therapy.

Oncogenic and tumor suppressing miRNAs have emerged as key regulators of gene expression in many types of cancer including melanoma. We utilized quantitative in situ hybridization (qISH) to evaluate the tumor suppressing properties of miRNA, miR-205 in a population of human tumors. We hypothesize decreased miR-205 would be associated with more aggressive tumors. Multiplexing miR-205 qISH with immunofluorescent assessment of S100/GP100 allowed us to quantitatively evaluate miR-205 expression using the AQUA method of quantitative immunofluorescence. The specificity of the assay was validated using blocking oligos and transfected cell lines as controls. Outcomes were assessed on the Yale Melanoma Discovery Cohort consisting of 105 primary melanoma specimens and validated on an independent set of 206 primary melanomas (Yale Melanoma Validation Cohort). Measurement of melanoma cell miR-205 levels shows a significantly shorter melanoma specific survival in patients with low expression. Multivariate analysis shows miR-205 levels are significantly independent of stage, age, gender and Breslow depth. Low levels of melanoma cell miR-205 expression as quantified by ISH show worse outcome, supporting the role of miR-205 as a tumor suppressor miRNA. The quantification of miR205 in situ suggests potential for the use of miRNAs in future prognostic or predictive models.

Abstract. Aortic injury remains a major contributor to morbidity and mortality from acute thoracic trauma. While such injuries were once nearly uniformly fatal, the advent of cross-sectional imaging in recent years has facilitated rapid diagnosis and triage, greatly improving outcomes. In fact, cross-sectional imaging is now the diagnostic test of choice for traumatic aortic injury (TAI), specifically computed tomography angiography (CTA) in the acute setting and CTA or magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) in follow-up. In this review, we present an up-to-date discussion of acute traumatic thoracic aortic injury with a focus on optimal and emerging CT/MR techniques, imaging findings of TAI, and potential pitfalls.

To develop a segmentation pipeline for segmentation of aortic dissection CT angiograms into true and false lumina on multiplanar reformations (MPRs) perpendicular to the aortic centerline and derive quantitative morphologic features, specifically aortic diameter and true-or false-lumen cross-sectional area. Materials and Methods: An automated segmentation pipeline including two convolutional neural network (CNN) segmentation algorithms was developed. The algorithm derives the aortic centerline, generates MPRs orthogonal to the centerline, and segments the true and false lumina. A total of 153 CT angiograms obtained from 45 retrospectively identified patients (mean age, 50 years; range, 22-79 years) were used to train (n = 103), validate (n = 22), and test (n = 28) the CNN pipeline. Accuracy was evaluated by using the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC). Segmentations were then used to derive the maximal diameter of test-set patients and cross-sectional area profiles of the true and false lumina. Results:The segmentation pipeline yielded a mean DSC of 0.873 6 0.056 for the true lumina and 0.894 6 0.040 for the false lumina of test-set cases. Automated maximal diameter measurements correlated well with manual measurements (R 2 = 0.95). Profiles of crosssectional diameter, true-lumen area, and false-lumen area over several follow-up examinations were derived. Conclusion:A segmentation pipeline was used to accurately identify true and false lumina on CT angiograms of aortic dissection. These segmentations can be used to obtain diameter and other morphologic parameters for surveillance and risk stratification.

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We introduce a multi-institutional data harvesting (MIDH) method for longitudinal observation of medical imaging utilization and reporting. By tracking both large-scale utilization and clinical imaging results data, the MIDH approach is targeted at measuring surrogates for important disease-related observational quantities over time. To quantitatively investigate its clinical applicability, we performed a retrospective multi-institutional study encompassing 13 healthcare systems throughout the United States before and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Using repurposed software infrastructure of a commercial AI-based image analysis service, we harvested data on medical imaging service requests and radiology reports for 40,037 computed tomography pulmonary angiograms (CTPA) to evaluate for pulmonary embolism (PE). Specifically, we compared two 70-day observational periods, namely (i) a pre-pandemic control period from 11/25/2019 through 2/2/2020, and (ii) a period during the early COVID-19 pandemic from 3/8/2020 through 5/16/2020. Natural language processing (NLP) on final radiology reports served as the ground truth for identifying positive PE cases, where we found an NLP accuracy of 98% for classifying radiology reports as positive or negative for PE based on a manual review of 2,400 radiology reports. Fewer CTPA exams were performed during the early COVID-19 pandemic than during the pre-pandemic period (9806 vs. 12,106). However, the PE positivity rate was significantly higher (11.6 vs. 9.9%, p < 10−4) with an excess of 92 PE cases during the early COVID-19 outbreak, i.e., ~1.3 daily PE cases more than statistically expected. Our results suggest that MIDH can contribute value as an exploratory tool, aiming at a better understanding of pandemic-related effects on healthcare.

Thyroid cancer incidence is rapidly increasing due to increased detection and diagnosis of indolent thyroid cancer, i.e. cancer that is likely to be clinically insignificant. Clinical, radiologic, and pathologic features predicting indolent behavior of thyroid cancer are still largely unknown and unstudied. Existing clinicopathologic staging systems are useful for providing prognosis in the context of treated thyroid cancer but are not designed for and are inadequate for predicting indolent behavior. Ultrasound studies have primarily focused on discrimination between malignant and benign nodules; some studies show promising data on using sonographic features for predicting indolence but are still in their early stages. Similarly, molecular studies are being developed to better characterize thyroid cancer and improve the yield of fine needle aspiration biopsy, but definite markers of indolent thyroid cancer have yet to be identified. Nonetheless, active surveillance has been introduced as an alternative to surgery in the case of indolent thyroid microcarcinoma, and protocols for safe surveillance are in development. As increased detection of thyroid cancer is all but inevitable, increased research on predicting indolent behavior is needed to avoid an epidemic of overtreatment.