Radiomics in Head and Neck Cancer: Extracting Valuable Information from Data beyond Recognition.

In oncology, biomarkers that describe the characteristics of a malignancy on different levels (clinical, histological, molecular) and the patient's outcome and treatment response are increasingly integrated into the clinical routine. Extensive screening tools, "omics," offer incredible opportunities and vast amounts of data. During the last years, the field of "omics" gained a new promising partner, the "radiomics." Based on radiological imaging, multiple features can be extracted and linked to clinical, genomic, and histopathological data from other sources. Extracted traits describe radiological intensity, shape and texture characteristics and can be analyzed on routinely performed images. These specific radiomic markers and patterns are currently developed for multiple tumor entities, and first studies for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck have been initiated.

Rotatable flexible neck-model for the evaluation of minimally invasive operation procedures with the help of an ultrasound-based navigation system.

Future minimally invasive neck surgery requires a navigation system adapted to the actual intraoperative bedding of the patient. The detection of the bedding-caused tissue shift is essential for a safe orientation for the surgeons' new endoscopic operation procedures in neck surgery. It is essential to visualize the relation between important anatomic landmarks and operation instruments at any time. Within the scientific project SACAS we focus on developing an ultrasound supported navigation system based on preoperative imaging which considers the intraoperative tissue shift. A rotatable, flexible neck-model provides the basis for our analyses to evaluate the tissue shift and to invent the new navigation system for endoscopic neck surgery. The total registration error of the system was 2 mm.