A novel tool for improving the interpretation of isotope bone scans in metastatic prostate cancer

Radiomics in prostate cancer: an up-to-date review

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common worldwide diagnosed malignancy in male population. The diagnosis, the identification of aggressive disease, and the post-treatment follow-up needs a more comprehensive and holistic approach. Radiomics is the extraction and interpretation of images phenotypes in a quantitative manner. Radiomics may give an advantage through advancements in imaging modalities and through the potential power of artificial intelligence techniques by translating those features into clinical outcome prediction. This article gives an overview on the current evidence of methodology and reviews the available literature on radiomics in PCa patients, highlighting its potential for personalized treatment and future applications.

Progress in diagnosis of bone metastasis of prostate cancer

The diagnosis of bone metastasis of prostate cancer (PC) is of great significance to the treatment and prognosis of patients with PC.Bone scan is the most commonly used in the early diagnosis of bone metastasis, but its specificity is low and there is a high false positive.In recent years, with the in-depth study of the application of CT, MRI, emission computed tomography (ECT), positron emission computed tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) and deep learning algorithm-convolutional neural networks (CNN) in the diagnosis of bone metastasis, the combined application of various auxiliary parameters in the diagnosis of bone metastasis has significantly been improved. The therapeutic effect of PC patients with bone metastasis can also be evaluated, which is expected to achieve the treatment of bone metastasis as well as diagnosis. By systematically expounding the research progress of the above-mentioned techniques in the diagnosis of bone metastasis, it can provide clinicians with new methods for the diagnosis of bone metastasis and improve the diagnostic efficiency for bone metastasis.

Diagnostic software proposal for bone scan follow-up using false color based on the gammagrams analysis from gray tone histograms

In this work we introduce a technique to speed up the interpretation of bone scans with the aim of determining the presence of absence of metastatic disease. We use gray tone histograms resembling the use of pass band filters, in order to ensure a reliable interpretation of the bone scan, providing an accurate diagnosis. We draw particular attention to three cases. The first case corresponds to shifted histograms. If the histogram is shifted toward the origin, the bone scan is free of metastasis. If it is shifted to the right and slightly broadened, indicates the presence of a bone scan anomaly different than metastasis. On the other hand, if the histogram is broadened and shifted to the left, is suggests the presence of metastatic disease. The second case corresponds to a histogram with noticeable fluctuations, indicating the presence of metastasis. Such fluctuations could become local maxima peaks indicating the advance of the metastasis. The third case, corresponds to the false color results displayed in terms of the gray tones observed in the histogram. Such false color is assigned from the construction of a 7-color palette selected in terms of the gray tones range, easing the ad hoc false color assignation for visualization purposes. The final diagnosis is carried out in terms of the color, geometry, extension and location of the region of interest in the images. Our proposed technique has the potential to be used in high-demand oncology centers due to its simplicity and diagnostic efficiency, confirmed and tested by specialists in the Centro Medico Siglo XXI (CDMX-Mexico).