New methodologies in CT perfusion and MRI analysis to develop cancer imaging biomarkers

Mottola, Margherita (2021) New methodologies in CT perfusion and MRI analysis to develop cancer imaging biomarkers, [Dissertation thesis], Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. Dottorato di ricerca in Ingegneria biomedica, elettrica e dei sistemi, 33 Ciclo. DOI 10.48676/unibo/amsdottorato/9812.
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Abstract

Quantitative imaging in oncology aims at developing imaging biomarkers for diagnosis and prediction of cancer aggressiveness and therapy response before any morphological change become visible. This Thesis exploits Computed Tomography perfusion (CTp) and multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging (mpMRI) for investigating diverse cancer features on different organs. I developed a voxel-based image analysis methodology in CTp and extended its use to mpMRI, for performing precise and accurate analyses at single-voxel level. This is expected to improve reproducibility of measurements and cancer mechanisms’ comprehension and clinical interpretability. CTp has not entered the clinical routine yet, although its usefulness in the monitoring of cancer angiogenesis, due to different perfusion computing methods yielding unreproducible results. Instead, machine learning applications in mpMRI, useful to detect imaging features representative of cancer heterogeneity, are mostly limited to clinical research, because of results’ variability and difficult interpretability, which make clinicians not confident in clinical applications. In hepatic CTp, I investigated whether, and under what conditions, two widely adopted perfusion methods, Maximum Slope (MS) and Deconvolution (DV), could yield reproducible parameters. To this end, I developed signal processing methods to model the first pass kinetics and remove any numerical cause hampering the reproducibility. In mpMRI, I proposed a new approach to extract local first-order features, aiming at preserving spatial reference and making their interpretation easier. In CTp, I found out the cause of MS and DV non-reproducibility: MS and DV represent two different states of the system. Transport delays invalidate MS assumptions and, by correcting MS formulation, I have obtained the voxel-based equivalence of the two methods. In mpMRI, the developed predictive models allowed (i) detecting rectal cancers responding to neoadjuvant chemoradiation showing, at pre-therapy, sparse coarse subregions with altered density, and (ii) predicting clinically significant prostate cancers stemming from the disproportion between high- and low- diffusivity gland components.

Abstract
Tipologia del documento
Tesi di dottorato
Autore
Mottola, Margherita
Supervisore
Co-supervisore
Dottorato di ricerca
Ciclo
33
Coordinatore
Settore disciplinare
Settore concorsuale
Parole chiave
Imaging biomarkers, signal processing, reproducibility, machine learning, cancer imaging
URN:NBN
DOI
10.48676/unibo/amsdottorato/9812
Data di discussione
21 Maggio 2021
URI

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