Calendar

Jan
29
Wed
2020
SCIT Seminar: Muna Aryal Rizal, PhD and Eduardo Somoza, MD @ Glazer Learning Center (Lucas P083)
Jan 29 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am
SCIT Seminar: Muna Aryal Rizal, PhD and Eduardo Somoza, MD @ Glazer Learning Center (Lucas P083)

Muna Aryal Rizal, PhD
Mentor: Jeremy Dahl, PhD and Raag Airan, MD, PhD

Noninvasive Focused Ultrasound Accelerates Glymphatic Transport to Bypass the Blood-Brain Barrier

ABSTRACT

Recent advancement in neuroscience revealed that the Central Nervous System (CNS) comprise glial-cell driven lymphatic system and coined the term called “Glymphatic pathway” by Neuroscientist, Maiden Nedergaard. Furthermore, it has been proven in rodent and non-human primate studies that the glymphatic exchange efficacy can decay in healthy aging, alzheimer’s disease models, traumatic brain injury, cerebral hemorrhage, and stroke. Studies in rodents have also shown that the glymphatic function can accelerate by doing easily-implemented, interventions like physical exercise, changes in body posture during sleep, intake of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and low dose alcohol (0.5 g/kg). Here, we proposed for the first time to accelerate the glymphatic function by manipulating the whole-brain ultrasonically using focused ultrasound, an emerging clinical technology that can noninvasively reach virtually throughout the brain. During this SCIT seminar, I will introduce the new ultrasonic approach to accelerates glymphatic transport and will share some preliminary findings.


Eduardo Somoza, MD
Mentor: Sandy Napel, PhD

Prediction of Clinical Outcomes in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) Utilizing Radiomic Features Derived from Pretreatment Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Scan

ABSTRACT

Diffuse Large B-Cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common type of lymphoma, accounting for a third of cases worldwide. Despite advancements in treatment, the five-year percent survival for this patient population is around sixty percent. This indicates a clinical need for being able to predict outcomes before the initiation of standard treatment. The approach we will be employing to address this need is the creation of a prognostic model from pretreatment clinical data of DLBCL patients seen at Stanford University Medical Center. In particular, there will be a focus on the derivation of radiomic features from pretreatment positron emission tomography (PET) scans as this has not been thoroughly investigated in similar published research efforts. We will layout the framework for our approach, with an emphasis on the aspects of our design that will allow for the translation of our efforts to multiple clinical settings. More importantly, we will discuss the importance and challenges of assembling a quality clinical database for this type of research. Ultimately, we hope our efforts will lead to the development of a prognostic model that can be utilized to guide treatment in DLBCL patients with refractory disease and/or high risk of relapse after completion of standard treatment.

Apr
22
Wed
2020
SCIT Quarterly Seminar @ Zoom: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/98960758162?pwd=aHJJc3pDS3FONkZIc2FoZ0hqcXU1dz09
Apr 22 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am
SCIT Quarterly Seminar @ Zoom: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/98960758162?pwd=aHJJc3pDS3FONkZIc2FoZ0hqcXU1dz09
“Tumor-Immune Interactions in TNBC Brain Metastases”
Maxine Umeh Garcia, PhD

ABSTRACT: It is estimated that metastasis is responsible for 90% of cancer deaths, with 1 in every 2 advanced staged triple-negative breast cancer patients developing brain metastases – surviving as little as 4.9 months after metastatic diagnosis. My project hypothesizes that the spatial architecture of the tumor microenvironment reflects distinct tumor-immune interactions that are driven by receptor-ligand pairing; and that these interactions not only impact tumor progression in the brain, but also prime the immune system (early on) to be tolerant of disseminated cancer cells permitting brain metastases. The main goal of my project is to build a model that recapitulates tumor-immune interactions in brain-metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, and use this model to identify novel druggable targets to improve survival outcomes in patients with devastating brain metastases.

“Classification of Malignant and Benign Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors With An Open Source Feature Selection Platform”
Michael Zhang, MD

ABSTRACT: Radiographic differentiation of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs) from benign PNSTs is a diagnostic challenge. The former is associated with a five-year survival rate of 30-50%, and definitive management requires gross total surgical with wide negative margins in areas of sensitive neurologic function. This presentation describes a radiomics approach to pre-operatively identifying a diagnosis, thereby possibly avoiding surgical complexity and debilitating symptoms. Using an open-source, feature extraction platform and machine learning, we produce a radiographic signature for MPNSTs based on routine MRI.

Sep
9
Wed
2020
Diversity in Radiology & Molecular Imaging: What We Need to Know @ Virtual Event
Sep 9 – Sep 11 all-day
Diversity in Radiology & Molecular Imaging: What We Need to Know @ Virtual Event

Dear WMIS trainees, colleagues and friends,

We welcome you to join our upcoming virtual WMIS – Stanford Diversity conference on September 9-11, 2020. We are coming together to reinforce our commitment to diversity and to provide a forum for our team members to engage in meaningful discussions. The conference will provide keynote lectures, scientific presentations and educational lectures from leaders and pioneers in the field, who will discuss important topics related to racial justice, women in STEM and Global Health. We are also offering breakout sessions whereby carefully selected individuals will facilitate a discussion about how to implement more supportive and inclusive practices into our daily professional and personal life. The breakout sessions are designed to enable active involvement of smaller groups where people feel safe to discuss current challenges in the STEM field and actionable solutions.

This conference is free of charge and will provide 9.5 CME credits. Abstracts of all conference presentations and a summary of discussion points and insights provided by all conference participants will be published in Molecular Imaging & Biology. The organizing committee will provide 10 trainee prizes in the form of free WMIS memberships to conference attendants for the 2021 WMIC in Miami.

Website: https://www.wmislive.org

Oct
21
Wed
2020
SCIT Quarterly Seminar @ See description for ZOOM link
Oct 21 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am

ZOOM LINK HERE

“High Resolution Breast Diffusion Weighted Imaging”
Jessica McKay, PhD

ABSTRACT: Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is a quantitative MRI method that measures the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of water molecules, which reflects cell density and serves as an indication of malignancy. Unfortunately, however, the clinical value of DWI is severely limited by the undesirable features in images that common clinical methods produce, including large geometric distortions, ghosting and chemical shift artifacts, and insufficient spatial resolution. Thus, in order to exploit information encoded in diffusion characteristics and fully assess the clinical value of ADC measurements, it is first imperative to achieve technical advancements of DWI.

In this talk, I will largely focus on the background of breast DWI, providing the clinical motivation for this work and explaining the current standard in breast DWI and alternatives proposed throughout the literature. I will also present my PhD dissertation work in which a novel strategy for high resolution breast DWI was developed. The purpose of this work is to improve DWI methods for breast imaging at 3 Tesla to robustly provide diffusion-weighted images and ADC maps with anatomical quality and resolution. This project has two major parts: Nyquist ghost correction and the use of simultaneous multislice imaging (SMS) to achieve high resolution. Exploratory work was completed to characterize the Nyquist ghost in breast DWI, showing that, although the ghost is mostly linear, the three-line navigator is unreliable, especially in the presence of fat. A novel referenceless ghost correction, Ghost/Object minimization was developed that reduced the ghost in standard SE-EPI and advanced SMS. An advanced SMS method with axial reformatting (AR) is presented for high resolution breast DWI. In a reader study, AR-SMS was preferred by three breast radiologists compared to the standard SE-EPI and readout-segmented-EPI.


“Machine-learning Approach to Differentiation of Benign and Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors: A Multicenter Study”

Michael Zhang, MD

ABSTRACT: Clinicoradiologic differentiation between benign and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (PNSTs) is a diagnostic challenge with important management implications. We sought to develop a radiomics classifier based on 900 features extracted from gadolinium-enhanced, T1-weighted MRI, using the Quantitative Imaging Feature Pipeline and the PyRadiomics package. Additional patient-specific clinical variables were recorded. A radiomic signature was derived from least absolute shrinkage and selection operator, followed by gradient boost machine learning. A training and test set were selected randomly in a 70:30 ratio. We further evaluated the performance of radiomics-based classifier models against human readers of varying medical-training backgrounds. Following image pre-processing, 95 malignant and 171 benign PNSTs were available. The final classifier included 21 features and achieved a sensitivity 0.676, specificity 0.882, and area under the curve (AUC) 0.845. Collectively, human readers achieved sensitivity 0.684, specificity 0.742, and AUC 0.704. We concluded that radiomics using routine gadolinium enhanced, T1-weighted MRI sequences and clinical features can aid in the evaluation of PNSTs, particularly by increasing specificity for diagnosing malignancy. Further improvement may be achieved with incorporation of additional imaging sequences.

Jan
15
Fri
2021
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting @ Zoom - See description for more information
Jan 15 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting @ Zoom - See description for more information

Radiology Department-Wide Research Meeting

Curt Langlotz, MD, PhD: Overview of the AIMI Center
Brian Hargreaves, PhD: Research Details from Town Hall, Q&A, and COVID19 Updates

 

Location: Zoom – Details can be found here: https://radresearch.stanford.edu
Meetings will be the 3rd Friday of each month.

 

Hosted by: Brian Hargreaves, PhD
Sponsored by: the the Department of Radiology

Feb
19
Fri
2021
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting @ Zoom - See description for more information
Feb 19 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting @ Zoom - See description for more information

Radiology Department-Wide Research Meeting

Location: Zoom – Details can be found here: https://radresearch.stanford.edu
Meetings will be the 3rd Friday of each month.

 

February 19 Speakers: 

Bruce Daniel, MDCenter Overview: IMMERS

Jennifer McNab, PhDEncoding and Decoding Diffusion MRI

 

Hosted by: Brian Hargreaves, PhD
Sponsored by: the the Department of Radiology

Mar
19
Fri
2021
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting
Mar 19 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting

Radiology Department-Wide Research Meeting

• Dominik Fleischmann, MD: 3DQ Lab Overview
• Tom Soh, PhD: Research Updates

 

Location: Zoom – Details can be found here: https://radresearch.stanford.edu
Meetings will be the 3rd Friday of each month.

 

Hosted by: Brian Hargreaves, PhD
Sponsored by: the the Department of Radiology

Apr
16
Fri
2021
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting
Apr 16 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting

Radiology Department-Wide Research Meeting

• Research Announcements
• Michelle James, PhD – Detecting and Tracking Immune Responses in the Brain and Beyond using PET
• Ryan Spitler, PhD – Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics (PHIND) Center

Location: Zoom – Details can be found here: https://radresearch.stanford.edu
Meetings will be the 3rd Friday of each month.

 

Hosted by: Brian Hargreaves, PhD
Sponsored by: the the Department of Radiology

Apr
30
Fri
2021
Racial Equity Challenge: Race in society @ Zoom
Apr 30 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Racial Equity Challenge: Race in society @ Zoom

Targeted violence continues against Black Americans, Asian Americans, and all people of color. The department of radiology diversity committee is running a racial equity challenge to raise awareness of systemic racism, implicit bias and related issues. Participants will be provided a list of resources on these topics such as articles, podcasts, videos, etc., from which they can choose, with the “challenge” of engaging with one to three media sources prior to our session (some videos are as short as a few minutes). Participants will meet in small-group breakout sessions to discuss what they’ve learned and share ideas.

Please reach out to Marta Flory, flory@stanford.edu with questions. For details about the session, including recommended resources and the Zoom link, please reach out to Meke Faaoso at mfaaoso@stanford.edu.

May
21
Fri
2021
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting
May 21 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Radiology-Wide Research Meeting

Radiology Department-Wide Research Meeting

• Research Announcements
• Koen Nieman, M.D., PhD – Coronary Artery Disease by Computed Tomography
• Martin Willemink, M.D., PhD – Translating Emerging Cardiovascular CT Techniques into the Clinical Setting

Location: Zoom – Details can be found here: https://radresearch.stanford.edu
Meetings will be the 3rd Friday of each month.

 

Hosted by: Daniel Ennis, PhD
Sponsored by: the the Department of Radiology