Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that begins with subtle cognitive changes and advances to severe impairment. Early diagnosis is crucial for effective intervention and management. In this study, we propose an integrated framework that leverages ensemble transfer learning, generative modeling, and automatic ROI extraction techniques to predict the progression of Alzheimer's disease from cognitively normal (CN) subjects. Using the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset, we employ a three-stage process: (1) estimating the probability of transitioning from CN to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) using ensemble transfer learning, (2) generating future MRI images using Transformer-based Generative Adversarial Network (ViT-GANs) to simulate disease progression after two years, and (3) predicting AD using a 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) with calibrated probabilities using isotonic regression and interpreting critical regions of interest (ROIs) with Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM). However, the proposed method has generality and may work when sufficient data for simulating brain changes after three years or more is available; in the training phase, regarding available data, brain changes after 2 years have been considered. Our approach addresses the challenge of limited longitudinal data by creating high-quality synthetic images and improving model transparency by identifying key brain regions involved in disease progression. The proposed method demonstrates high accuracy and F1-score, 0.85 and 0.86, respectively, in CN to AD prediction up to 10 years, offering a potential tool for early diagnosis and personalized intervention strategies in Alzheimer's disease.

Cervical cancer commonly associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, remains the fourth most common cancer in women globally. This study aims to develop and evaluate a Natural Language Processing (NLP) system to identify and analyze cervical cancer incidence trends from 2013 to 2023 at our institution, focusing on age-specific variations and evaluating the possible impact of HPV vaccination. This retrospective cohort study, we analyzed unstructured radiology reports collected between 2013 and 2023, comprising 433,207 studies involving 250,181 women who underwent CT, MRI, or ultrasound scans of the abdominopelvic region. A rule-based NLP system was developed to extract references to cervical cancer from these reports and validated against a set of 200 manually annotated cases reviewed by an experienced radiologist. The NLP system demonstrated excellent performance, achieving an accuracy of over 99.5 %. This high reliability enabled its application in a large-scale population study. Results show that the women under 30 maintain a consistently low cervical cancer incidence, likely reflecting early HPV vaccination impact. The 30-40 cohorts declined until 2020, followed by a slight increase, while the 40-60 groups exhibited an overall downward trend with fluctuations, suggesting long-term vaccine effects. Incidence in patients over 60 also declined, though with greater variability, possibly due to other risk factors. The developed NLP system effectively identified cervical cancer cases from unstructured radiology reports, facilitating an accurate analysis of the impact of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer prevalence and imaging study requirements. This approach demonstrates the potential of AI and NLP tools in enhancing data accuracy and efficiency in medical epidemiology research. NLP-based approaches can significantly improve the collection and analysis of epidemiological data on cervical cancer, supporting the development of more targeted and personalized prevention strategies-particularly in populations with heterogeneous HPV vaccination coverage.

Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive and common brain tumors, with a median survival of 10-15 months. Predicting Overall Survival (OS) is critical for personalizing treatment strategies and aligning clinical decisions with patient outcomes. In this study, we propose a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach for OS prediction using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) images, exploiting Vision Transformers (ViTs) to extract hidden features directly from MRI images, eliminating the need of tumor segmentation. Unlike traditional approaches, our method simplifies the workflow and reduces computational resource requirements. The proposed model was evaluated on the BRATS dataset, reaching an accuracy of 62.5% on the test set, comparable to the top-performing methods. Additionally, it demonstrated balanced performance across precision, recall, and F1 score, overcoming the best model in these metrics. The dataset size limits the generalization of the ViT which typically requires larger datasets compared to convolutional neural networks. This limitation in generalization is observed across all the cited studies. This work highlights the applicability of ViTs for downsampled medical imaging tasks and establishes a foundation for OS prediction models that are computationally efficient and do not rely on segmentation.

Radiology visual question answering (RVQA) provides precise answers to questions about chest X-ray images, alleviating radiologists' workload. While recent methods based on multimodal large language models (MLLMs) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) have shown promising progress in RVQA, they still face challenges in factual accuracy, hallucinations, and cross-modal misalignment. We introduce a multi-agent system (MAS) designed to support complex reasoning in RVQA, with specialized agents for context understanding, multimodal reasoning, and answer validation. We evaluate our system on a challenging RVQA set curated via model disagreement filtering, comprising consistently hard cases across multiple MLLMs. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority and effectiveness of our system over strong MLLM baselines, with a case study illustrating its reliability and interpretability. This work highlights the potential of multi-agent approaches to support explainable and trustworthy clinical AI applications that require complex reasoning.

This study aims to improve the accuracy of distinguishing Tuberculous Spondylitis (TBS) from Brucella Spondylitis (BS) by developing radiomics models using Deep Learning and CT images enhanced with Super-Resolution (SR). A total of 94 patients diagnosed with BS or TBS were randomly divided into training (n=65) and validation (n=29) groups in a 7:3 ratio. In the training set, there were 40 BS and 25 TBS patients, with a mean age of 58.34 ± 12.53 years. In the validation set, there were 17 BS and 12 TBS patients, with a mean age of 58.48 ± 12.29 years. Standard CT images were enhanced using SR, improving spatial resolution and image quality. The lesion regions (ROIs) were manually segmented, and radiomics features were extracted. ResNet18 and ResNet34 were used for deep learning feature extraction and model training. Four multi-layer perceptron (MLP) models were developed: clinical, radiomics (Rad), deep learning (DL), and a combined model. Model performance was assessed using five-fold cross-validation, ROC, and decision curve analysis (DCA). Statistical significance was assessed, with key clinical and imaging features showing significant differences between TBS and BS (e.g., gender, p=0.0038; parrot beak appearance, p<0.001; dead bone, p<0.001; deformities of the spinal posterior process, p=0.0044; psoas abscess, p<0.001). The combined model outperformed others, achieving the highest AUC (0.952), with ResNet34 and SR-enhanced images further boosting performance. Sensitivity reached 0.909, and Specificity was 0.941. DCA confirmed clinical applicability. The integration of SR-enhanced CT imaging and deep learning radiomics appears to improve diagnostic differentiation between BS and TBS. The combined model, especially when using ResNet34 and GAN-based super-resolution, demonstrated better predictive performance. High-resolution imaging may facilitate better lesion delineation and more robust feature extraction. Nevertheless, further validation with larger, multicenter cohorts is needed to confirm generalizability and reduce potential bias from retrospective design and imaging heterogeneity. This study suggests that integrating Deep Learning Radiomics with Super-Resolution may improve the differentiation between TBS and BS compared to standard CT imaging. However, prospective multi-center studies are necessary to validate its clinical applicability.

This study aimed to develop a deep learning radiomics nomogram (DLRN) that integrated B-mode ultrasound (BMUS) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) images for preoperative lymphovascular invasion (LVI) prediction in invasive breast cancer (IBC). Total 981 patients with IBC from three hospitals were retrospectively enrolled. Of 834 patients recruited from Hospital I, 688 were designated as the training cohort and 146 as the internal test cohort, whereas 147 patients from Hospitals II and III were assigned to constitute the external test cohort. Deep learning and handcrafted radiomics features of BMUS and CEUS images were extracted from breast cancer to construct a deep learning radiomics (DLR) signature. The DLRN was developed by integrating the DLR signature and independent clinicopathological parameters. The performance of the DLRN is evaluated with respect to discrimination, calibration, and clinical benefit. The DLRN exhibited good performance in predicting LVI, with areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) of 0.885 (95% confidence interval [CI,0.858-0.912), 0.914 (95% CI, 0.868-0.960) and 0.914 (95% CI, 0.867-0.960) in the training, internal test, and external test cohorts, respectively. The DLRN exhibited good stability and clinical practicability, as demonstrated by the calibration curve and decision curve analysis. In addition, the DLRN outperformed the traditional clinical model and the DLR signature for LVI prediction in the internal and external test cohorts (all p < 0.05). The DLRN exhibited good performance in predicting LVI, representing a non-invasive approach to preoperatively determining LVI status in IBC.

Lacunes, which are small fluid-filled cavities in the brain, are signs of cerebral small vessel disease and have been clinically associated with various neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases. Hence, accurate detection of lacunes is crucial and is one of the initial steps for the precise diagnosis of these diseases. However, developing a robust and consistently reliable method for detecting lacunes is challenging because of the heterogeneity in their appearance, contrast, shape, and size. In this study, we propose a lacune detection method using the Segment Anything Model (SAM), guided by point prompts from a candidate prompt generator. The prompt generator initially detects potential lacunes with a high sensitivity using a composite loss function. The true lacunes are then selected using SAM by discriminating their characteristics from mimics such as the sulcus and enlarged perivascular spaces, imitating the clinicians' strategy of examining the potential lacunes along all three axes. False positives are further reduced by adaptive thresholds based on the region wise prevalence of lacunes. We evaluated our method on two diverse, multi-centric MRI datasets, VALDO and ISLES, comprising only FLAIR sequences. Despite diverse imaging conditions and significant variations in slice thickness (0.5-6 mm), our method achieved sensitivities of 84% and 92%, with average false positive rates of 0.05 and 0.06 per slice in ISLES and VALDO datasets respectively. The proposed method demonstrates robust performance across varied imaging conditions and outperformed the state-of-the-art methods, demonstrating its effectiveness in lacune detection and quantification.

To evaluate the performance of artificial intelligence (AI)-based coronary artery calcium scoring (CACS) on non-electrocardiogram (ECG)-gated chest CT, using manual quantification as the reference standard, while characterizing per-vessel reliability and clinical risk classification impacts. Retrospective study of 290 patients (June 2023-2024) with paired non-ECG-gated chest CT and ECG-gated cardiac CT (median time was 2 days). AI-based CACS and manual CACS (CACS_man) were compared using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and weighted Cohen's kappa (3,1). Error types, anatomical distributions, and CACS of the lesions of individual arteries or segments were assessed in accordance with the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) guidelines. The total CACS of chest CT demonstrated excellent concordance with CACS_man (ICC = 0.87, 95 % CI 0.84-0.90). Non-ECG-gated chest showed a 7.5-fold increased risk misclassification rate compared to ECG-gated cardiac CT (41.4 % vs. 5.5 %), with 35.5 % overclassification and 5.9 % underclassification. Vessel-specific analysis revealed paradoxical reliability of the left anterior descending artery (LAD) due to stent misclassification in four cases (ICC = 0.93 on chest CT vs 0.82 on cardiac CT), while the right coronary artery (RCA) demonstrated suboptimal performance with ICCs ranging from 0.60 to 0.68. Chest CT exhibited higher false-positive (1.9 % vs 0.5 %) and false-negative rates (14.4 % vs 4.3 %). False positive mainly derived from image noise in proximal LAD/RCA (median CACS 5.97 vs 3.45) and anatomical error, while false negatives involved RCA microcalcifications (median CACS 2.64). AI-based non-ECG-gated chest CT demonstrates utility for opportunistic screening but requires protocol optimization to address vessel-specific limitations and mitigate 41.4 % risk misclassification rates.

In this intercontinental, confirmatory study, we include a retrospective cohort of 22,481 MRI examinations (21,288 patients; 46 cities in 22 countries) to train and externally validate the PI-CAI-2B model, i.e., an efficient, next-generation iteration of the state-of-the-art AI system that was developed for detecting Gleason grade group $\geq$2 prostate cancer on MRI during the PI-CAI study. Of these examinations, 20,471 cases (19,278 patients; 26 cities in 14 countries) from two EU Horizon projects (ProCAncer-I, COMFORT) and 12 independent centers based in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, are used for training and internal testing. Additionally, 2010 cases (2010 patients; 20 external cities in 12 countries) from population-based screening (STHLM3-MRI, IP1-PROSTAGRAM trials) and primary diagnostic settings (PRIME trial) based in Europe, North and South Americas, Asia and Australia, are used for external testing. Primary endpoint is the proportion of AI-based assessments in agreement with the standard of care diagnoses (i.e., clinical assessments made by expert uropathologists on histopathology, if available, or at least two expert urogenital radiologists in consensus; with access to patient history and peer consultation) in the detection of Gleason grade group $\geq$2 prostate cancer within the external testing cohorts. Our statistical analysis plan is prespecified with a hypothesis of diagnostic interchangeability to the standard of care at the PI-RADS $\geq$3 (primary diagnosis) or $\geq$4 (screening) cut-off, considering an absolute margin of 0.05 and reader estimates derived from the PI-CAI observer study (62 radiologists reading 400 cases). Secondary measures comprise the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of the AI system stratified by imaging quality, patient age and patient ethnicity to identify underlying biases (if any).

Incidental pulmonary emboli (IPE) are frequently overlooked by radiologists. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have been developed to aid detection of pulmonary emboli. To measure diagnostic performance of AI compared with prospective interpretation by radiologists. A commercially available AI algorithm was used to retrospectively review 14,453 contrast-enhanced outpatient CT CAP exams in 9171 patients where PE was not clinically suspected. Natural language processing (NLP) searches of reports identified IPE detected prospectively. Thoracic radiologists reviewed all cases read as positive by AI or NLP to confirm IPE and assess the most proximal level of clot and overall clot burden. 1,400 cases read as negative by both the initial radiologist and AI were re-reviewed to assess for additional IPE. Radiologists prospectively detected 218 IPE and AI detected an additional 36 unreported cases. AI missed 30 cases of IPE detected by the radiologist and had 94 false positives. For 36 IPE missed by the radiologist, median clot burden was 1 and 19 were solitary segmental or subsegmental. For 30 IPE missed by AI, one case had large central emboli and the others were small with 23 solitary subsegmental emboli. Radiologist re-review of 1,400 exams interpreted as negative found 8 additional cases of IPE. Compared with radiologists, AI had similar sensitivity but reduced positive predictive value. Our experience indicates that the AI tool is not ready to be used autonomously without human oversight, but a human observer plus AI is better than either alone for detection of incidental pulmonary emboli.