Brachytherapy strand visibility in reflected power ultrasound images: Comparison of EchoStrand vs. regular strands using 3D visibility profiles
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Poor visibility of the implanted brachytherapy seeds in ultrasound images is an obstacle for real time ultrasound-based dosimetry. A common practice in brachytherapy is to encapsulate the seeds in a structure called strand, manufactured from a synthetic bioabsorbable polymer. A possible solution to the visibility problem of the brachytherapy seeds is to localize the strand polymers, as opposed to the seeds, by using an echogenic strand polymer as in the EchoStrand product from BrachySciences. We extract and compare the 3D visibility profiles of EchoStrand with those of regular strands, at different angles between the ultrasound probe and the strand. The results show that the ultrasound visibility of both strand types decreases when the angle of orientation between the ultrasound transducer and the strand increases. However, at non-parallel orientations, the EchoStrand is significantly (p-value <; 0.03) more visible compared to regular strands.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".