Automated thermal imaging monitors the local response to cervical cancer brachytherapy |
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Authors: | Oshrit Hoffer Tatiana Rabin Rony-Reuven Nir Rafael Y Brzezinski Yair Zimmer Israel Gannot |
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Institution: | 1. School of Electrical Engineering, Afeka College of Engineering, Tel Aviv, Israel;2. Radiation Oncology Department, Tel Aviv Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel;3. Primary Care Medicine, Meuhedet Health Services, Tel Aviv, Israel;4. Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel;5. School of Medical Engineering, Afeka College of Engineering, Tel Aviv, Israel;6. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel |
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Abstract: | Malignant tumors have high metabolic and perfusion rates, which result in a unique temperature distribution as compared to healthy tissues. Here, we sought to characterize the thermal response of the cervix following brachytherapy in women with advanced cervical carcinoma. Six patients underwent imaging with a thermal camera before a brachytherapy treatment session and after a 7-day follow-up period. A designated algorithm was used to calculate and store the texture parameters of the examined tissues across all time points. We used supervised machine learning classification methods (K Nearest Neighbors and Support Vector Machine) and unsupervised machine learning classification (K-means). Our algorithms demonstrated a 100% detection rate for physiological changes in cervical tumors before and after brachytherapy. Thus, we showed that thermal imaging combined with advanced feature extraction could potentially be used to detect tissue-specific changes in the cervix in response to local brachytherapy for cervical cancer.![image](/cms/asset/cffe55d4-9259-495f-9bb3-c5d05fbe26bb/jbio202200214-gra-0001.png) |
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Keywords: | brachytherapy cervical cancer mobile medical application thermal imaging |
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