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Multiphase information fusion and spatiotemporal feature modeling play a crucial role in the task of four-phase CT lesion recognition. In this paper, we propose a four-phase CT lesion recognition algorithm based on multiphase information fusion framework and spatiotemporal prediction module. Specifically, the multiphase information fusion framework uses the interactive perception mechanism to realize the channel-spatial information interactive weighting between multiphase features. In the spatiotemporal prediction module, we design a 1D deep residual network to integrate multiphase feature vectors, and use the GRU architecture to model the temporal enhancement information between CT slices. In addition, we employ CT image pseudo-color processing for data augmentation and train the whole network based on a multi-task learning framework. We verify the proposed network on a four-phase CT dataset. The experimental results show that the proposed network can effectively fuse the multi-phase information and model the temporal enhancement information between CT slices, showing excellent performance in lesion recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Microwave ablation (MWA) is widely used to treat unresectable primary and secondary malignancies of the liver, and a limited number of studies indicate that ablation can cause not only necrosis at the in situ site but also an immunoreaction of the whole body. This study aimed to investigate the effects of MWA on cytokines in patients who underwent MWA for a hepatic malignancy.Methods: Patients admitted to the Oncology Department in the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University between June 2015 and February 2019 were selected. Peripheral blood was collected from patients with a hepatic malignancy treated with MWA. The levels of cytokines (IL-2, IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-12 p40, IL-12 p70, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)) were detected with a Milliplex® MAP Kit. The comparison times were as follows: before ablation, 24 h after ablation, 15 days after ablation, and 30 days after ablation. Data were analyzed using a paired sample t-tests and Spearman's correlation analysis.Results: A total of 43 patients with hepatic malignancies were assessed. There were significant differences in IL-2, IL-12 p40, IL-12 p70, IL-1β, IL-8, and TNF-α at 24 h after MWA. Significant increases (> 2-fold vs. before ablation) were observed in IL-2, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and TNF-α after MWA. Elevated IL-2 and IL-6 levels after ablation were positively correlated with energy output during the MWA procedure.Conclusions: WA treatment for hepatic malignancies can alter the serum levels of several cytokines such as IL-2 and IL-6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]