Rouzrokh, Pouria

Background: Establishing imaging registries for large patient cohorts is challenging because manual labeling is tedious and relying solely on DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine) metadata can result in errors. We endeavored to establish an automated hip and pelvic radiography registry of total hip arthroplasty (THA) patients by utilizing deep-learning pipelines. The aims of the study were (1) to utilize these automated pipelines to identify all pelvic and hip radiographs with appropriate annotation of laterality and presence or absence of implants, and (2) to automatically measure acetabular component inclination and version for THA images. Methods: We retrospectively retrieved 846,988 hip and pelvic radiography DICOM files from 20,378 patients who underwent primary or revision THA performed at our institution from 2000 to 2020. Metadata for the files were screened followed by extraction of imaging data. Two deep-learning algorithms (an EfficientNetB3 classifier and a YOLOv5 object detector) were developed to automatically determine the radiographic appearance of all files. Additional deep-learning algorithms were utilized to automatically measure the acetabular angles on anteroposterior pelvic and lateral hip radiographs. Algorithm performance was compared with that of human annotators on a random test sample of 5,000 radiographs. Results: Deep-learning algorithms enabled appropriate exclusion of 209,332 DICOM files (24.7%) as misclassified non-hip/pelvic radiographs or having corrupted pixel data. The final registry was automatically curated and annotated in <8 hours and included 168,551 anteroposterior pelvic, 176,890 anteroposterior hip, 174,637 lateral hip, and 117,578 oblique hip radiographs. The algorithms achieved 99.9% accuracy, 99.6% precision, 99.5% recall, and a 99.6% F1 score in determining the radiograph appearance. Conclusions: We developed a highly accurate series of deep-learning algorithms to rapidly curate and annotate THA patient radiographs. This efficient pipeline can be utilized by other institutions or registries to construct radiography databases for patient care, longitudinal surveillance, and large-scale research. The stepwise approach for establishing a radiography registry can further be utilized as a workflow guide for other anatomic areas. Level of Evidence: Diagnostic Level IV . See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

There is a growing demand for high-resolution (HR) medical images for both clinical and research applications. Image quality is inevitably traded off with acquisition time, which in turn impacts patient comfort, examination costs, dose, and motion-induced artifacts. For many image-based tasks, increasing the apparent spatial resolution in the perpendicular plane to produce multi-planar reformats or 3D images is commonly used. Single-image super-resolution (SR) is a promising technique to provide HR images based on deep learning to increase the resolution of a 2D image, but there are few reports on 3D SR. Further, perceptual loss is proposed in the literature to better capture the textural details and edges versus pixel-wise loss functions, by comparing the semantic distances in the high-dimensional feature space of a pre-trained 2D network (e.g., VGG). However, it is not clear how one should generalize it to 3D medical images, and the attendant implications are unclear. In this paper, we propose a framework called SOUP-GAN: Super-resolution Optimized Using Perceptual-tuned Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), in order to produce thinner slices (e.g., higher resolution in the ‘Z’ plane) with anti-aliasing and deblurring. The proposed method outperforms other conventional resolution-enhancement methods and previous SR work on medical images based on both qualitative and quantitative comparisons. Moreover, we examine the model in terms of its generalization for arbitrarily user-selected SR ratios and imaging modalities. Our model shows promise as a novel 3D SR interpolation technique, providing potential applications for both clinical and research applications.

Background: Dislocation is the most common reason for early revision following total hip arthroplasty (THA). More than 40 years ago, Lewinnek et al. proposed an acetabular “safe zone” to avoid dislocation. While novel at the time, their study was substantially limited according to modern standards. The purpose of this study was to determine optimal acetabular cup positioning during THA as well as the effect of surgical approach on the topography of the acetabular safe zone and the hazard of dislocation. Methods: Primary THAs that had been performed at a single institution from 2000 to 2017 were reviewed. Acetabular inclination and anteversion were measured using an artificial intelligence neural network; they were validated with performance testing and comparison with blinded grading by 2 orthopaedic surgeons. Patient demographics and dislocation were noted during follow-up. Multivariable Cox proportional-hazards regression, including multidimensional analysis, was performed to define the 3D topography of the acetabular safe zone and its association with surgical approach. Results: We followed 9,907 THAs in 8,081 patients (4,166 women and 3,915 men; 64 ± 13 years of age) for a mean of 5 ± 3 years (range: 2 to 16); 316 hips (3%) sustained a dislocation during follow-up. The mean acetabular inclination was 44° ± 7° and the mean anteversion was 32° ± 9°. Patients who did not sustain a dislocation had a mean anteversion of 32° ± 9° (median, 32°), with the historic ideal anteversion of 15° observed to be only in the third percentile among non-dislocating THAs (p < 0.001). Multivariable modeling demonstrated the lowest dislocation hazards at an inclination of 37° and an anteversion of 27°, with an ideal modern safe zone of 27° to 47° of inclination and 18° to 38° of anteversion. Three-dimensional analysis demonstrated a similar safe-zone location but significantly different safe-zone topography among surgical approaches (p = 0.03) and sexes (p = 0.02). Conclusions: Optimal acetabular positioning differs significantly from historic values, with increased anteversion providing decreased dislocation risk. Additionally, surgical approach and patient sex demonstrated clear effects on 3D safe-zone topography. Further study is needed to characterize the 3D interaction between acetabular positioning and spinopelvic as well as femoral-sided parameters. Level of Evidence: Prognostic Level III . See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

Abstract Primary sclerosis cholangitis (PSC) predisposes individuals to liver failure, but it is challenging for radiologists examining radiologic images to predict which patients with PSC will ultimately develop liver failure. Motivated by algebraic topology, a topological data analysis - inspired framework was adopted in the study of the imaging pattern between the “Early Decompensation” and “Not Early” groups. The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology discriminates “Early Decompensation” and “Not Early” groups. Our study is the first attempt to provide a topological representation-based method into early hepatic decompensation and not early groups.