Akira Furukawa

Neoadjuvant Intra-Arterial Chemotherapy for Locally Advanced Uterine Cervical Cancer: Clinical Efficacy and Factors Influencing Response

AbstractPurpose: To evaluate the effects of neoadjuvant intra-arterial chemotherapy (NAIC) for locally advanced uterine cervical cancer, and to analyze factors influencing the response to the chemotherapy. Methods: Thirty-four patients with invasive cervical cancer more than 4 cm in diameter were enrolled in this study. NAIC was performed using cisplatin-based regimens. The response was assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and examination of surgical specimens. Pretreatment factors involved in the response to NAIC were evaluated and the relationship between the factors and the prognosis was assessed. Results: Clinical response was achieved in 28 (82%) patients. Thirty-one of 49 invasions in the parametrial halves disappeared. Seventeen of 28 lymph node swellings responded to NAIC. Six of the 14 stage III patients became operable. In the 19 surgical cases, pathologically complete responses were found in four. Twenty-eight of the 38 parametrial halves were free from cancer. No lymph node metastases were found in eight patients. Initial tumor volume was found to be an independent, significant determining factor of the response to NAIC. Patients with initial tumor volumes less than 80 cm3 had a significantly better estimated 5-year disease-free survival rate compared with those with larger tumors. Conclusion: NAIC for locally advanced cervical cancer is useful for preoperative tumor reduction. Tumor volume is a significant determining factor for the response to NAIC.

Evaluation of Liver Shape Approximation and Characterization

A computational framework is presented for 3-D liver shape approximation and characterization in order to determine the accuracy of shape reconstruction via Spherical Harmonics expansion. Spherical Harmonics is a powerful mathematical tool for expanding the shape. But in medical domain, livers have very variation geometry, in shape, size, and volume. In this regards, we evaluated and optimized the Spherical Harmonics to create 3-D parametric surface of the liver from Computed Tomography (CT) imaging system which may useful for Shape modeling, surface representation, physical measurement of objects and mathematical model. We select randomly 5 livers from more 100 dataset. Mean Hausdorff distance Errors and Dice similarity coefficient DSC by liver volumes was measured. The experimental results showed that the best order of Spherical Harmonics Expansion for livers is between 12~17.

Efficient shape representation and statistical shape modeling of the liver using spherical harmonic functions (SPHARM)

In the field of medical image analysis, the three-dimensional (3-D) shape representation and modeling of anatomic structures using only a few parameters is an important issue, and can be applied to computer assisted diagnosis, surgical simulations, visualization, and many other medical applications. In this paper, we show that the 3D anatomical structure such as the liver can be represented by a few coefficients of spherical harmonic functions (SPHARM). We also propose to use SPHARM based shape representation for statistical shape modeling. Since the dimension of SPHARM based shape representation vector is much lower than the conventional shape representation using coordinates of surface points, our proposed method can be used for small number of training samples and enhance the computation cost.