Measurement Variability in Treatment Response Determination for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Improvements using Radiomics

Multimodality imaging measurements of treatment response are critical for clinical practice, oncology trials, and the evaluation of new treatment modalities. The current standard for determining treatment response in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is based on tumor size using the RECIST criteria. Molecular targeted agents and immunotherapies often cause morphological change without reduction of tumor size. Therefore, it is difficult to evaluate therapeutic response by conventional methods. Radiomics is the study of cancer imaging features that are extracted using machine learning and other semantic features. This method can provide comprehensive information on tumor phenotypes and can be used to assess therapeutic response in this new age of immunotherapy. Delta radiomics, which evaluates the longitudinal changes in radiomics features, shows potential in gauging treatment response in NSCLC. It is well known that quantitative measurement methods may be subject to substantial variability due to differences in technical factors and require standardization. In this review, we describe measurement variability in the evaluation of NSCLC and the emerging role of radiomics. © 2019 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved

Whole-body diffusion-weighted imaging for staging malignant lymphoma in children

CT is currently the mainstay in staging malignant lymphoma in children, but the risk of second neoplasms due to ionizing radiation associated with CT is not negligible. Whole-body MRI techniques and whole-body diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in particular, may be a good radiation-free alternative to CT. DWI is characterized by high sensitivity for the detection of lesions and allows quantitative assessment of diffusion that may aid in the evaluation of malignant lymphomas. This article will review whole-body MRI techniques for staging malignant lymphoma with emphasis on whole-body DWI. Furthermore, future considerations and challenges in whole-body DWI will be discussed

A Guide to Emissions Trading under the Western Climate Initiative

This Guide presents an overview of the cap-and-trade system of carbon emissions trading created and adhered to under the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). This Guide is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of a cap-and-trade system of emissions permits. Chapter 2 explains the constitutional background to cap-and-trade schemes in the United States and Canada. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the linked system and a summary of its principal features in each WCI cap-and-trade partner jurisdiction (California, Quebec, Ontario). Chapter 4 explains how emission allowances are traded under the WCI and includes the results of a survey undertaken of emissions trading market participants. Chapter 5 provides some concluding observations with respect to WCI cap-and-trade

Recommendations and guidelines from the ISMRM Diffusion Study Group for preclinical diffusion MRI: Part 1 -- In vivo small-animal imaging

The value of in vivo preclinical diffusion MRI (dMRI) is substantial. Small-animal dMRI has been used for methodological development and validation, characterizing the biological basis of diffusion phenomena, and comparative anatomy. Many of the influential works in this field were first performed in small animals or ex vivo samples. The steps from animal setup and monitoring, to acquisition, analysis, and interpretation are complex, with many decisions that may ultimately affect what questions can be answered using the data. This work aims to serve as a reference, presenting selected recommendations and guidelines from the diffusion community, on best practices for preclinical dMRI of in vivo animals. In each section, we also highlight areas for which no guidelines exist (and why), and where future work should focus. We first describe the value that small animal imaging adds to the field of dMRI, followed by general considerations and foundational knowledge that must be considered when designing experiments. We briefly describe differences in animal species and disease models and discuss how they are appropriate for different studies. We then give guidelines for in vivo acquisition protocols, including decisions on hardware, animal preparation, imaging sequences and data processing, including pre-processing, model-fitting, and tractography. Finally, we provide an online resource which lists publicly available preclinical dMRI datasets and software packages, to promote responsible and reproducible research. An overarching goal herein is to enhance the rigor and reproducibility of small animal dMRI acquisitions and analyses, and thereby advance biomedical knowledge.Comment: 69 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Navigating EU Law and the Law of International Arbitration

The European Union and international arbitration are two robust legal regimes that have managed to develop largely in accordance with their own respective “first principles,” and they have accordingly thrived. This article initially explains why that has been the case. But the era of parallelism between the regimes has ended, and rather suddenly. This article identifies the two principal fronts on which tensions between EU law and international arbitration law have emerged. Interestingly, both commercial and investment arbitration are implicated. A first front entails a conflict between the European Court of Justice\u27s (ECJ\u27s) expansive notions of EU public policy and two well-established axioms of international commercial arbitration law: first, that public policy must be construed narrowly when invoked as a ground for annulling an award or denying it recognition and enforcement; and second, that parties in arbitration are expected to raise all substantive arguments pertinent to their claims or defences in the course of the arbitral proceedings and not reserve them for post-award relief from a disappointing award. A second front finds EU Member States invoking their obligations under EU law as a defence – sometimes jurisdictional, sometimes substantive – in investor-State tribunals. The paradigm argument is that EU law mandates withdrawal of an illegal state aid in reliance on which an investor entered that market. This article examines two prevailing methodologies for addressing these tensions, in arbitral tribunals themselves as well as in reviewing courts. It concludes that many such tensions – particularly those along the first front – may be resolved through accommodation techniques well-established in other areas of the law. Others, particularly those arising in the investor-State context, resist resolution in that way and are requiring decision-makers to face the uncomfortable prospect of making one of these legal regimes cede ground to the other. The ECJ and investor-State tribunals are understandably inclined to prioritise the regimes differently, with the ultimate outcome falling to member state courts which owe allegiance to both regimes

Quantitative imaging in radiation oncology

Artificially intelligent eyes, built on machine and deep learning technologies, can empower our capability of analysing patients’ images. By revealing information invisible at our eyes, we can build decision aids that help our clinicians to provide more effective treatment, while reducing side effects. The power of these decision aids is to be based on patient tumour biologically unique properties, referred to as biomarkers. To fully translate this technology into the clinic we need to overcome barriers related to the reliability of image-derived biomarkers, trustiness in AI algorithms and privacy-related issues that hamper the validation of the biomarkers. This thesis developed methodologies to solve the presented issues, defining a road map for the responsible usage of quantitative imaging into the clinic as decision support system for better patient care

Frequency-domain characterization of random demodulation analog-to-information converters

The paper aims at proposing test methods for Analog-to-Information Converters (AICs).In particular, the objective of this work is to verify if figures of merit and test methods, currently defined in standards for traditional Analog-to-Digital Converters, can be applied to AICs based on the random demodulation architecture.For this purpose, an AIC prototype has been designed, starting from commercially available integrated circuits. A simulation analysis and an experimental investigation have been carried out to study the additional influencing factors such as the parameters of the reconstruction algorithm. Results show that standard figures of merit are in general capable of describing the performance of AICs, provided that they are slightly modified according to the proposals reported in the paper. In addition, test methods have to be modified in order to take into account the statistical behavior of AICs.</p