Response Evaluation Criteria in Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Cancers: Which to Use and How to Measure.

As the management of gastrointestinal malignancy has evolved, tumor response assessment has expanded from size-based assessments to those that include tumor enhancement, in addition to functional data such as those derived from PET and diffusion-weighted imaging. Accurate interpretation of tumor response therefore requires knowledge of imaging modalities used in gastrointestinal malignancy, anticancer therapies, and tumor biology. Targeted therapies such as immunotherapy pose additional considerations due to unique imaging response patterns and drug toxicity; as a consequence, immunotherapy response criteria have been developed. Some gastrointestinal malignancies require assessment with tumor-specific criteria when assessing response, often to guide clinical management (such as watchful waiting in rectal cancer or suitability for surgery in pancreatic cancer). Moreover, anatomic measurements can underestimate therapeutic response when applied to molecular-targeted therapies or locoregional therapies in hypervascular malignancies such as hepatocellular carcinoma. In these cases, responding tumors may exhibit morphologic changes including cystic degeneration, necrosis, and hemorrhage, often without significant reduction in size. Awareness of pitfalls when interpreting gastrointestinal tumor response is required to correctly interpret response assessment imaging and guide appropriate oncologic management. Data-driven image analyses such as radiomics have been investigated in a variety of gastrointestinal tumors, such as identifying those more likely to respond to therapy or recur, with the aim of delivering precision medicine. Multimedia-enhanced radiology reports can facilitate communication of gastrointestinal tumor response by automatically embedding response categories, key data, and representative images. ©RSNA, 2024 Test Your Knowledge questions for this article are available in the supplemental material.

Institutional experience of using active breathing control for paediatric and teenage patients receiving thoraco-abdominal radiotherapy.

Introduction: Active Breathing Control (ABC) is a motion management strategy that facilitates reproducible breath-hold for thoracic radiotherapy (RT), which may reduce radiation dose to organs at risk (OARs). Reduction of radiation-induced toxicity is of high importance in younger patients. However, there is little published literature on the feasibility of ABC in this group. The purpose of this study was to report our experience of using ABC for paediatric and teenage patients. Methods: Patients ≤18 years referred for thoracic RT using ABC at our centre from 2013-2021 were identified. Electronic records were retrospectively reviewed to obtain information on diagnosis, RT dose and technique, OAR dosimetry, tolerability of ABC, post-treatment imaging and early toxicity rates. Results: 12 patients completed RT and were able to comply with ABC during planning and for the duration of RT. Median age was 15.5 years (10-18 years). Diagnoses were: Hodgkin lymphoma (n = 5), mediastinal B-cell lymphoma (n = 1), Ewing sarcoma (n = 5) and rhabdomyosarcoma (n = 1). For mediastinal RT cases (n = 6), median dose delivered was 30.6Gy(19.8-40Gy), median mean heart dose was 11.4Gy(4.8-19.4Gy), median mean lung dose was 9.9Gy(5.7-14.5Gy) and mean lung V20 was 10.9%. For ipsilateral RT cases, (n = 6), median hemithorax and total doses to primary tumour were 18Gy(15-20Gy) and 52.2Gy(36-60Gy) respectively. Median mean heart dose was 19.5Gy(10.6-33.2Gy) and median mean lung dose was 17.7Gy(16.3-30.5Gy). Mean bilateral lung V20 was 39.6%. Median mean contralateral lung dose was 5.2Gy(3.5-11.6Gy) and mean contralateral lung V20 was 1.5%. At a median follow-up of 36 months, only 1 patient had symptomatic radiation pneumonitis having received further thoracic RT following relapse. Conclusions: ABC is feasible and well tolerated in younger patients receiving RT. Children as young as 10 years are able to comply. Use of ABC results in OAR dosimetry which is comparable to similar data in adults and can facilitate RT for extensive thoracic sarcoma.

Accelerating 4D image reconstruction for magnetic resonance-guided radiotherapy.

Background and purpose: Physiological motion impacts the dose delivered to tumours and vital organs in external beam radiotherapy and particularly in particle therapy. The excellent soft-tissue demarcation of 4D magnetic resonance imaging (4D-MRI) could inform on intra-fractional motion, but long image reconstruction times hinder its use in online treatment adaptation. Here we employ techniques from high-performance computing to reduce 4D-MRI reconstruction times below two minutes to facilitate their use in MR-guided radiotherapy. Material and methods: Four patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma were scanned with a radial stack-of-stars gradient echo sequence on a 1.5T MR-Linac. Fast parallelised open-source implementations of the extra-dimensional golden-angle radial sparse parallel algorithm were developed for central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) architectures. We assessed the impact of architecture, oversampling and respiratory binning strategy on 4D-MRI reconstruction time and compared images using the structural similarity (SSIM) index against a MATLAB reference implementation. Scaling and bottlenecks for the different architectures were studied using multi-GPU systems. Results: All reconstructed 4D-MRI were identical to the reference implementation (SSIM > 0.99). Images reconstructed with overlapping respiratory bins were sharper at the cost of longer reconstruction times. The CPU  + GPU implementation was over 17 times faster than the reference implementation, reconstructing images in 60 ± 1 s and hyper-scaled using multiple GPUs. Conclusion: Respiratory-resolved 4D-MRI reconstruction times can be reduced using high-performance computing methods for online workflows in MR-guided radiotherapy with potential applications in particle therapy.

Public and Patient Involvement in Doctoral Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reflections on the Process, Challenges, Impact and Experiences From the Perspectives of Adults With Cerebral Palsy and the Doctoral Researcher.

Introduction: Cerebral palsy (CP) is a lifelong condition, where people may experience complications as they age. Including the views of people with CP through Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) ensures that research into the condition is relevant and meaningful in addressing their concerns. However, there is a lack of evidence on incorporating the voices of adults with CP in the doctoral research process. Therefore, this paper aims to provide an overview of how adults with CP were involved in a doctoral research process during the pandemic. Methods: This paper describes the PPI process and its impact at various stages of the doctoral research process and reflects on the experiences from the perspective of the doctoral researcher and adults with CP using the INVOLVE Values and Principles framework. Five adults with CP were consulted throughout the doctoral research programme. The data for this paper is a combination of reflection notes, email exchanges, meeting minutes and informal discussions with the PPI team on their experiences of being involved in the PPI process. The content of this paper is informed by GRIPP 2 checklist. Results: The doctoral researcher and adult reflections highlighted the value of collaboration and the positive impact on research at each stage of the doctoral research process. Although meetings were adapted due to the pandemic, the values of PPI were adhered to throughout the doctoral research. Conclusion: Involving adults with CP positively impacted the doctoral research process. It is recommended to consider individual access needs to ensure meetings and information are accessible for disabled adults. Our reflective findings and recommendations may help other researchers who plan to involve adults with CP in doctoral research.

Electroconvulsive therapy and/or plasmapheresis in autoimmune encephalitis?

Autoimmune encephalitis is a poorly understood condition that can present with a combination of neurological and psychiatric symptoms, either of which may predominate. There are many autoantibodies associated with a variety of clinical syndromes - anti-N-Methyl-D-Aspartate receptor (NMDAR) is the commonest. Currently, the most widely used therapy is prompt plasmapheresis and steroid treatment (and tumour resection if indicated), followed by second line immunosuppression if this fails. Given the growing awareness of autoimmune encephalitis as an entity, it is increasingly important that we consider it as a potential diagnosis in order to provide timely, effective treatment. We discuss several previously published case reports and one new case. These reports examined the effects of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on patients with autoimmune encephalitis, particularly those in whom psychiatric symptoms are especially debilitating and refractory to standard treatment. We also discuss factors predicting good outcome and possible mechanisms by which ECT may be effective. Numerous cases, such as those presented by Wingfield, Tsutsui, Florance, Sansing, Braakman and Matsumoto, demonstrate effective use of ECT in anti-NMDAR encephalitis patients with severe psychiatric symptoms such as catatonia, psychosis, narcolepsy and stupor who had failed to respond to standard treatments alone. We also present a new case of a 71-year-old female who presented to a psychiatric unit initially with depression, which escalated to catatonia, delusions, nihilism and auditory hallucinations. After anti-NMDAR antibodies were isolated, she was treated by the neurology team with plasmapheresis and steroids, with a partial response. She received multiple sessions of ECT and her psychiatric symptoms completely resolved and she returned to her premorbid state. For this reason, we suggest that ECT should be considered, particularly in those patients who are non-responders to standard therapies.