No abstract

We studied the reliability of teledermatology diagnoses made using a Web-based system. Clinical photographs and information relating to 125 patients were placed on a Web server. Three dermatologists made the most likely diagnosis via a Web interface. The reference diagnosis was made in a face-to-face consultation with a fourth dermatologist; where appropriate it was confirmed histologically. The teledermatologists were correct in 57% of cases when viewing the images alone. Their diagnostic accuracy improved to 70% when additional clinical information was available. The rate of agreement between the teledermatologists ranged from 44% to 70% (kappa= 0.22-0.32). Seventy-seven per cent of the patients were correctly diagnosed by at least two dermatologists when clinical information was provided. A Web-based system appears to be reliable for teledermatology. A single well trained teledermatologist may give better results than a group of less well trained clinicians.

No abstract

Purpose We sought to investigate the performance of radiomics analysis on baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT for predicting response to first-line chemotherapy in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Material and methods Forty-five patients who received first-line rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone (R-CHOP) chemotherapy for DLBCL were included in the study. Radiomics features and standard uptake value (SUV)-based measurements were extracted from baseline PET images for a total of 147 lesions. The selection of the most relevant features was made using the recursive feature elimination algorithm. A machine-learning model was trained using the logistic regression classifier with cross-validation to predict treatment response. The independent predictors of incomplete response were evaluated with multivariable regression analysis. Results A total of 14 textural features were selected by the recursive elimination algorithm, achieving a feature-to-lesion ratio of 1:10. The accuracy and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the model for predicting incomplete response were 0.87 and 0.81, respectively. Multivariable analysis revealed that SUVmax and gray level co-occurrence matrix dissimilarity were independent predictors of lesions with incomplete response to first-line R-CHOP chemotherapy. Conclusion Increased textural heterogeneity in baseline PET images was found to be associated with incomplete response in DLBCL.

18 Fluorine fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) has been used extensively in positron emission tomographic (PET) imaging for oncology. FDG is a glucose analog demonstrating enhanced uptake in the majority of malignant as well as granulomatous lesions. Although a few cases of pigmented villonodular synovitis using bone scanning agents Tl-201 chloride, Ga-67 citrate, and Tc-99m pentavalent dimercaptosuccinic acid have been published, to our knowledge FDG PET imaging of pigmented villonodular synovitis has not.