58 research outputs found
The value of 99mTc-MAA SPECT/CT for lung shunt estimation in 90Y radioembolization: a phantom and patient study
Abstract
Background
A major toxicity concern in radioembolization therapy of hepatic malignancies is radiation-induced pneumonitis and sclerosis due to hepatopulmonary shunting of 90Y microspheres. Currently, 99mTc macroaggregated albumin (99mTc-MAA) imaging is used to estimate the lung shunt fraction (LSF) prior to treatment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy/precision of LSF estimated from 99mTc planar and SPECT/CT phantom imaging, and within this context, to compare the corresponding LSF and lung-absorbed dose values from 99mTc-MAA patient studies. Additionally, LSFs from pre- and post-therapy imaging were compared.
Results
A liver/lung torso phantom filled with 99mTc to achieve three lung shunt values was scanned by planar and SPECT/CT imaging with repeat acquisitions to assess accuracy and precision. To facilitate processing of patient data, a workflow that relies on SPECT and CT-based auto-contouring to define liver and lung volumes for the LSF calculation was implemented. Planar imaging-based LSF estimates for 40 patients, obtained from their medical records, were retrospectively compared with SPECT/CT imaging-based calculations with attenuation and scatter correction. Additionally, in a subset of 20 patients, the pre-therapy estimates were compared with 90Y PET/CT-based measurements.
In the phantom study, improved accuracy in LSF estimation was achieved using SPECT/CT with attenuation and scatter correction (within 13% of the true value) compared with planar imaging (up to 44% overestimation). The results in patients showed a similar trend with planar imaging significantly overestimating LSF compared to SPECT/CT. There was no correlation between lung shunt estimates and the delay between 99mTc-MAA administration and scanning, but off-target extra hepatic uptake tended to be more likely in patients with a longer delay. The mean lung absorbed dose predictions for the 28 patients who underwent therapy was 9.3 Gy (range 1.3–29.4) for planar imaging and 3.2 Gy (range 0.4–13.4) for SPECT/CT. For the patients with post-therapy imaging, the mean LSF from 90Y PET/CT was 1.0%, (range 0.3–2.8). This value was not significantly different from the mean LSF estimate from 99mTc-MAA SPECT/CT (mean 1.0%, range 0.4–1.6; p = 0.968), but was significantly lower than the mean LSF estimate based on planar imaging (mean 4.1%, range 1.2–15.0; p = 0.0002).
Conclusions
The improved accuracy demonstrated by the phantom study, agreement with 90Y PET/CT in patient studies, and the practicality of using auto-contouring for liver/lung definition suggests that 99mTc-MAA SPECT/CT with scatter and attenuation corrections should be used for lung shunt estimation prior to radioembolization.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144504/1/13550_2018_Article_402.pd
Beyond Inventories: Emergence of a New Era in Rangeland Monitoring
In the absence of technology-driven monitoring platforms, US rangeland policies, management practices, and outcome assessments have been primarily informed by the extrapolation of local information from national-scale rangeland inventories. A persistent monitoring gap between plot-level inventories and the scale at which rangeland assessments are conducted has required decision makers to fill data gaps with statistical extrapolations or assumptions of homogeneity and equilibrium. This gap is now being bridged with spatially comprehensive, annual, rangeland monitoring data across all western US rangelands to as- sess vegetation conditions at a resolution appropriate to inform cross-scale assessments and decisions. In this paper, 20-yr trends in plant functional type cover are presented, confirming two widespread national rangeland resource concerns: widespread increases in annual grass cover and tree cover. Rangeland vegetation monitoring is now available to inform national to regional policies and provide essential data at the scales at which decisions are made and implemented
Spatial Imaging and Screening for Regime Shifts
Screening is a strategy for detecting undesirable change prior to manifestation of symptoms or adverse effects. Although the well-recognized utility of screening makes it commonplace in medicine, it has yet to be implemented in ecosystem management. Ecosystem management is in an era of diagnosis and treatment of undesirable change, and as a result, remains more reactive than proactive and unable to effectively deal with today’s plethora of non-stationary conditions. In this paper, we introduce spatial imaging-based screening to ecology. We link advancements in spatial resilience theory, data, and technological and computational capabilities and power to detect regime shifts (i.e., vegetation state transitions) that are known to be detrimental to human well-being and ecosystem service delivery. With a state-of-the-art landcover dataset and freely available, cloud-based, geospatial computing platform, we screen for spatial signals of the three most iconic vegetation transitions studied in western USA rangelands: (1) erosion and desertification; (2) woody encroachment; and (3) annual exotic grass invasion. For a series of locations that differ in ecological complexity and geographic extent, we answer the following questions: (1) Which regime shift is expected or of greatest concern? (2) Can we detect a signal associated with the expected regime shift? (3) If detected, is the signal transient or persistent over time? (4) If detected and persistent, is the transition signal stationary or non-stationary over time? (5) What other signals do we detect? Our approach reveals a powerful and flexible methodology, whereby professionals can use spatial imaging to verify the occurrence of alternative vegetation regimes, image the spatial boundaries separating regimes, track the magnitude and direction of regime shift signals, differentiate persistent and stationary transition signals that warrant continued screening from more concerning persistent and non-stationary transition signals, and leverage disciplinary strength and resources for more targeted diagnostic testing (e.g., inventory and monitoring) and treatment (e.g., management) of regime shifts. While the rapid screening approach used here can continue to be implemented and refined for rangelands, it has broader implications and can be adapted to other ecological systems to revolutionize the information space needed to better manage critical transitions in nature
Herbaceous production lost to tree encroachment in United States rangelands
1. Rangelands of the United States provide ecosystem services that benefit society and rural economies. Native tree encroachment is often overlooked as a primary threat to rangelands due to the slow pace of tree cover expansion and the positive public perception of trees. Still, tree encroachment fragments these landscapes and reduces herbaceous production, thereby threatening habitat quality for grassland wildlife and the economic sustainability of animal agriculture.
2. Recent innovations in satellite remote sensing permit the tracking of tree encroachment and the corresponding impact on herbaceous production. We analysed tree cover change and herbaceous production across the western United States from 1990 to 2019.
3. We show that tree encroachment is widespread in US rangelands; absolute tree cover has increased by 50% (77,323 km2) over 30 years, with more than 25% (684,852 km2) of US rangeland area experiencing tree cover expansion. Since 1990, 302 ± 30 Tg of herbaceous biomass have been lost. Accounting for variability in livestock biomass utilization and forage value reveals that this lost production is valued at between 5.6 billion US dollars.
4. Synthesis and applications. The magnitude of impact of tree encroachment on rangeland loss is similar to conversion to cropland, another well-known and primary mechanism of rangeland loss in the US Prioritizing conservation efforts to prevent tree encroachment can bolster ecosystem and economic sustainability, particularly among privately-owned lands threatened by land-use conversion
Low-Tech Riparian and Wet Meadow Restoration Increases Vegetation Productivity and Resilience Across Semiarid Rangelands
Restoration of riparian and wet meadow ecosystems in semiarid rangelands of the western United States is a high priority given their ecological and hydrological importance in the region. However, traditional restoration approaches are often intensive and costly, limiting the extent over which they can be applied. Practitioners are increasingly trying new restoration techniques that are more cost‐effective, less intensive, and can more practically scale up to the scope of degradation. Unfortunately, practitioners typically lack resources to undertake outcome‐based evaluations necessary to judge the efficacy of these techniques. In this study, we use freely available, satellite remote sensing to explore changes in vegetation productivity (normalized difference vegetation index) of three distinct, low‐tech, riparian and wet meadow restoration projects. Case studies are presented that range in geographic location (Colorado, Oregon, and Nevada), restoration practice (Zeedyk structures, beaver dam analogs, and grazing management), and time since implementation. Restoration practices resulted in increased vegetation productivity of up to 25% and increased annual persistence of productive vegetation. Improvements in productivity with time since restoration suggest that elevated resilience may further enhance wildlife habitat and increase forage production. Long‐term, documented outcomes of conservation are rare; we hope our findings empower practitioners to further monitor and explore the use of low‐tech methods for restoration of ecohydrologic processes at meaningful spatial scales
Tracking spatial regimes in animal communities: Implications for resilience-based management
Spatial regimes (the spatial extents of ecological states) exhibit strong spatiotemporal order as they expand or contract in response to retreating or encroaching adjacent spatial regimes (e.g., woody plant invasion of grasslands) and human management (e.g., fire treatments). New methods enable tracking spatial regime boundaries via vegetation landcover data, and this approach is being used for strategic management across biomes. A clear advancement would be incorporating animal community data to track spatial regime boundaries alongside vegetation data. In a 41,170-hectare grassland experiencing woody plant encroachment, we test the utility of using animal community data to track spatial regimes via two hypotheses. (H1) Spatial regime boundaries identified via independent vegetation and animal datasets will exhibit spatial synchrony; specifically, grassland:woodland bird community boundaries will synchronize with grass:woody vegetation boundaries. (H2) Negative feedbacks will stabilize spatial regimes identified via animal data; specifically, frequent fire treatments will stabilize grassland bird community boundaries. We used 26 years of bird community and vegetation data alongside 32 years of fire history data. We identified spatial regime boundaries with bird community data via a wombling approach. We identified spatial regime boundaries with vegetation data by calculating spatial covariance between remotely-sensed grass and woody plant cover per pixel. For fire history data, we calculated the cumulative number of fires per pixel. Setting bird boundary strength (wombling R2 values) as the response variable, we tested our hypotheses with a hierarchical generalized additive model (HGAM). Both hypotheses were supported: animal boundaries synchronized with vegetation boundaries in space and time, and grassland bird communities stabilized as fire frequency increased (HGAM explained 38% of deviance). We can now track spatial regimes via animal community data pixel-by-pixel and year-by-year. Alongside vegetation boundary tracking, tracking animal community boundaries can inform the scale of management necessary to maintain animal communities endemic to desirable ecological states. Our approach will be especially useful for conserving animal communities requiring large-scale, unfragmented landscapes—like grasslands and steppes
Phenology largely explains taller grass at successful nests in greater sage-grouse
Much interest lies in the identification of manageable habitat variables that affect key vital rates for species of concern. For ground-nesting birds, vegetation surrounding the nest may play an important role in mediating nest success by providing concealment from predators. Height of grasses surrounding the nest is thought to be a driver of nest survival in greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; sage-grouse), a species that has experienced widespread population declines throughout their range. However, a growing body of the literature has found that widely used field methods can produce misleading inference on the relationship between grass height and nest success. Specifically, it has been demonstrated that measuring concealment following nest fate (failure or hatch) introduces a temporal bias whereby successful nests are measured later in the season, on average, than failed nests. This sampling bias can produce inference suggesting a positive effect of grass height on nest survival, though the relationship arises due to the confounding effect of plant phenology, not an effect on predation risk. To test the generality of this finding for sage-grouse, we reanalyzed existing datasets comprising \u3e800 sage-grouse nests from three independent studies across the range where there was a positive relationship found between grass height and nest survival, including two using methods now known to be biased. Correcting for phenology produced equivocal relationships between grass height and sage-grouse nest survival. Viewed in total, evidence for a ubiquitous biological effect of grass height on sage-grouse nest success across time and space is lacking. In light of these findings, a reevaluation of land management guidelines emphasizing specific grass height targets to promote nest success may be merited
Tracking spatial regimes in animal communities: Implications for resilience-based management
Spatial regimes (the spatial extents of ecological states) exhibit strong spatiotemporal order as they expand or contract in response to retreating or encroaching adjacent spatial regimes (e.g., woody plant invasion of grasslands) and human management (e.g., fire treatments). New methods enable tracking spatial regime boundaries via vegetation landcover data, and this approach is being used for strategic management across biomes. A clear advancement would be incorporating animal community data to track spatial regime boundaries alongside vegetation data. In a 41,170-hectare grassland experiencing woody plant encroachment, we test the utility of using animal community data to track spatial regimes via two hypotheses. (H1) Spatial regime boundaries identified via independent vegetation and animal datasets will exhibit spatial synchrony; specifically, grassland:woodland bird community boundaries will synchronize with grass:woody vegetation boundaries. (H2) Negative feedbacks will stabilize spatial regimes identified via animal data; specifically, frequent fire treatments will stabilize grassland bird community boundaries. We used 26 years of bird community and vegetation data alongside 32 years of fire history data. We identified spatial regime boundaries with bird community data via a wombling approach. We identified spatial regime boundaries with vegetation data by calculating spatial covariance between remotely-sensed grass and woody plant cover per pixel. For fire history data, we calculated the cumulative number of fires per pixel. Setting bird boundary strength (wombling R2 values) as the response variable, we tested our hypotheses with a hierarchical generalized additive model (HGAM). Both hypotheses were supported: animal boundaries synchronized with vegetation boundaries in space and time, and grassland bird communities stabilized as fire frequency increased (HGAM explained 38% of deviance). We can now track spatial regimes via animal community data pixel-by-pixel and year-by-year. Alongside vegetation boundary tracking, tracking animal community boundaries can inform the scale of management necessary to maintain animal communities endemic to desirable ecological states. Our approach will be especially useful for conserving animal communities requiring large-scale, unfragmented landscapes—like grasslands and steppes
Next-generation technologies unlock new possibilities to track rangeland productivity and quantify multi-scale conservation outcomes
Historically, relying on plot-level inventories impeded our ability to quantify large-scale change in plant biomass, a key indicator of conservation practice outcomes in rangeland systems. Recent technological advances enable assessment at scales appropriate to inform management by providing spatially comprehensive estimates of productivity that are partitioned by plant functional group across all contiguous US rangelands. We partnered with the Sage Grouse and Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiatives and the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project to demonstrate the ability of these new datasets to quantify multi-scale changes and heterogeneity in plant biomass following mechanical tree removal, prescribed fire, and prescribed grazing. In Oregon’s sagebrush steppe, for example, juniper tree removal resulted in a 21% increase in one pasture’s productivity and an 18% decline in another. In Nebraska’s Loess Canyons, perennial grass productivity initially declined 80% at sites invaded by trees that were prescriptively burned, but then fully recovered post-fire, representing a 492% increase from nadir. In Kansas’ Shortgrass Prairie, plant biomass increased 4-fold (966,809 kg/ha) in pastures that were prescriptively grazed, with gains highly dependent upon precipitation as evidenced by sensitivity of remotely sensed estimates (SD ± 951,308 kg/ha). Our results emphasize that next-generation remote sensing datasets empower land managers to move beyond simplistic control versus treatment study designs to explore nuances in plant biomass in unprecedented ways. The products of new remote sensing technologies also accelerate adaptive management and help communicate wildlife and livestock forage benefits from management to diverse stakeholders
Innovation in Rangeland Monitoring: Annual, 30 M, Plant Functional Type Percent Cover Maps for U.S. Rangelands, 1984-2017
Innovations in machine learning and cloud‐based computing were merged with historical remote sensing and field data to provide the first moderate resolution, annual, percent cover maps of plant functional types across rangeland ecosystems to effectively and efficiently respond to pressing challenges facing conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. We utilized the historical Landsat satellite record, gridded meteorology, abiotic land surface data, and over 30,000 field plots within a Random Forests model to predict per‐pixel percent cover of annual forbs and grasses, perennial forbs and grasses, shrubs, and bare ground over the western United States from 1984 to 2017. Results were validated using three independent collections of plot‐level measurements, and resulting maps display land cover variation in response to changes in climate, disturbance, and management. The maps, which will be updated annually at the end of each year, provide exciting opportunities to expand and improve rangeland conservation, monitoring, and management. The data open new doors for scientific investigation at an unprecedented blend of temporal fidelity, spatial resolution, and geographic scale
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