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Background: Size-based assessments are inaccurate indicators of tumor response in soft-tissue sarcoma (STS), motivating the requirement for new response imaging biomarkers for this rare and heterogeneous disease. In this study, we assess the test-retest repeatability of radiomic features from MR diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and derived maps of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in retroperitoneal STS and compare baseline repeatability with changes in radiomic features following radiotherapy (RT). Materials and methods: Thirty patients with retroperitoneal STS received an MR examination prior to treatment, of whom 23/30 were investigated in our repeatability analysis having received repeat baseline examinations and 14/30 patients were investigated in our post-treatment analysis having received an MR examination after completing pre-operative RT. One hundred and seven radiomic features were extracted from the full manually delineated tumor region using PyRadiomics. Test-retest repeatability was assessed using an intraclass correlation coefficient (baseline ICC), and post-radiotherapy variance analysis (post-RT-IMS) was used to compare the change in radiomic feature value to baseline repeatability. Results: For the ADC maps and DWI images, 101 and 102 features demonstrated good baseline repeatability (baseline ICC > 0.85), respectively. Forty-three and 2 features demonstrated both good baseline repeatability and a high post-RT-IMS (>0.85), respectively. Pearson correlation between the baseline ICC and post-RT-IMS was weak (0.432 and 0.133, respectively). Conclusions: The ADC-based radiomic analysis shows better test-retest repeatability compared with features derived from DWI images in STS, and some of these features are sensitive to post-treatment change. However, good repeatability at baseline does not imply sensitivity to post-treatment change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is a major cause of cognitive impairment in elderly people. While most research focuses on the role of the classical vascular risk factors in SVD, a description of the psychophysiological mechanisms leading to the age‐related brain damage may open new possibilities for prophylaxis. In the current study, we evaluated the associations between emotional abilities, interoception, and age‐related vascular white matter degeneration. The work was influenced, first, by multiple studies recognizing alexithymia as a cardiovascular risk factor; second, by theories of emotions linking body's allostasis and emotional regulation; and third, by neuroimaging data highlighting the shared role of the insular cortex in interoceptive and emotional processing. In a sample of older female adults (N = 30), we performed the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, functional MRI using the heartbeat detection task, and evaluation of white matter microstructural integrity using diffusion weighted imaging. The ability to understand and analyze emotions—one of the four components of emotional intelligence—was found to be associated with higher interoception‐related activation of the right anterior insula and preserved white matter microstructure. We interpret these results in light of the concept of Embodied Predictive Interoception Coding, which proposes that emotional processing, interoception, and allostasis (antecedent top‐down regulation of the body's internal milieu) may rely on the shared neural mechanisms of predictive coding. The study demonstrates feasibility of the investigation of cerebrovascular diseases form a psychophysiological perspective and calls for future research. Associations between emotional intelligence and age‐related cerebrovascular brain injury are revealed in the context of neuroscientific theories of emotion and interoception, using functional neuroimaging with the heartbeat detection task. We have shown that the ability to understand emotions is related to higher insular activation and to preserved white matter microstructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the prognostic value of preoperative FDG-PET/CT and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) in patients with breast cancer.Methods: A total of 73 patients with newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer who had undergone preoperative whole-body FDG-PET/CT and 3-Tesla breast MRI including DWI followed by surgery were identified. Effects of primary tumor PET parameters [maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), mean SUV (SUVmean), metabolic tumor volume (MTV), and total lesion glycolysis (TLG)] and DWI parameters [mean apparent diffusion coefficient (ADCmean) and minimum ADC (ADCmin)] including clinicopathologic factors on disease-free survival (DFS) were retrospectively evaluated using the log-rank and Cox methods.Results: After a median overall follow-up of 32.3 months in all patients, 6 (8.2%) of the 73 patients had recurrence. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and log-rank tests showed that patients with a high primary tumor SUVmax (≥ 3.60), MTV (≥ 3.15), and TLG (≥ 16.0) had a significantly lower DFS rate than those with a low SUVmax (< 3.60), MTV (< 3.15), and TLG (< 16.0), respectively (p = 0.0054, p = 0.0054, and p < 0.0001, respectively). SUVmean, ADCmean, and ADCmin were not significantly associated with recurrence. Univariate analysis showed that SUVmax (p = 0.0054), MTV (p = 0.0054), TLG (p < 0.0001), tumor size (p = 0.0083), estrogen receptor negativity (p = 0.046), progesterone receptor negativity (p = 0.0023), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 positivity (p = 0.043), and the presence of axillary lymph node metastasis (p = 0.0037) were also significantly associated with recurrence. However, in multivariate analysis, none of them were an independent factor.Conclusions: The preoperative SUVmax, MTV, and TLG of primary breast cancer are prognostic factors for recurrence, whereas ADC values are not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]