NECScanNet: Novel Method for Cervical Neuroendocrine Cancer Screening from Whole Slide Images

As a rare malignant tumor, cervical neuroendocrine cancer (NEC) is difficult in diagnosis even for experienced pathologists. A computer-assisted diagnosis may be helpful for the improvement of diagnostic accuracy. Nevertheless, the computer-aided pathological diagnosis has to face a great challenge that the hundred-million-pixels or even gig-pixels whole slide images (WSIs) cannot be applied directly in the existing deep convolution network for training and analysis. Therefore, the construction of a neural network to realize the automatic screening of cervical NEC is challenging; meanwhile, as far as we know, little attention has been paid to this field. In order to address this problem, here we present a multiple-instance learning method for automatic recognition of cervical NEC on pathological WSI, which consists of the Sliding Detector module and Lesion Analyzer module. A pathological WSI dataset, which is composed of 84 NEC cases and 216 NEC-free cases from the Pathological Department of West China Second University Hospital, is applied to evaluate the performance of the method. The experimental results show that the recall rate, accuracy rate, and precision rate of our method for automatic recognition are 92.9%, 92.7%, and 83.0%, respectively, demonstrating the effectiveness and the potential in clinical practice. The application of this method in computer-assisted pathological diagnosis is expected to decrease the misdiagnosis as well as the false diagnosis of rare cervical NEC, and, consequently, improve the therapeutic effect of cervical cancers.

Concomitant intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) and neuroendocrine tumor (NET) of pancreas

We present a rare clinical case of a 66-year-old woman who had two different synchronuos tumors of pancreas: intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) and neuroendocrine cancer. The preoperative CT/MRI diagnosis was not too difficult, because of the typical presentations, but the combination of features was very unusual. A morphological examination after surgical operation followed by fine-needle biopsy confirmed the preoperative diagnosis of combined the two different tumors.

Clinicopathological Analysis of Neuroendocrine Carcinoma of the Uterine Cervix: A Single-Institution Retrospective Review of 9 Cases

Aim. To evaluate the clinicopathological features affecting the recurrence and survival of 9 cases of neuroendocrine cancer of the cervix. Method. We retrospectively analyzed 9 cervical neuroendocrine cancer cases identified among 453 cervical cancer patients between 2004 and 2021 at Akdeniz University Gynecological Oncology Outpatient Clinic. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used for progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Mathematical functions of mean, standard deviation, median, Min–Max values, and frequencies were used for descriptive statistics. The categorical data were expressed in numbers and percentages (%). Results. Nine patients with neuroendocrine histological subtype were selected out of 453 patients diagnosed with cervical cancer (1.98%). The average overall survival time of the patients was 26 months. The 5-year survival rate was 53.3%, while the PFS was 62.5%. The most common subtype was small cell neuroendocrine cancer. Tumours were mostly locally advanced at the time of diagnosis. 3 patients’ stage was 1b2, while 4 patients were 2b, 1 patient was 3c2r, and 1 patient was 4b. All tumours showed the immunohistochemical staining properties of neuroendocrine cancer. The main treatment modality applied to our patients was surgery + adjuvant CRT. The most used chemotherapeutic agents were cisplatin/carboplatin and etoposide. Recurrence was found in 3 cases, including 5 deaths. Conclusion. Neuroendocrine tumour of the cervix is a rare subtype with a poor prognosis. Unfortunately, there is not yet a standard treatment protocol due to the limited number of comparative studies of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy based treatment schemes.

Bending, Breaking, Wrapping, Binding: Material Knowledge And The Creation Of A Series Of Artist's Books For Catharine Christina Anderson

I. Introduction In March of 2016, my Grandmother called me to ask if I could help her lift my aunt Tina out of bed and into her wheelchair. Born with spina bifida, Tina was paralyzed from the waist down; she lived with my grandmother who took care of her. Increasingly, a migrating pain that had first begun in her knee was making ordinary tasks difficult. That night, my grandmother picked me up in her old green car and brought me to Tina’s bedside. I locked my arms through hers while my grandmother lifted her legs. As we pulled her into her chair, she cried out in pain. I hesitated, but at my grandmother’s urging, we continued. This had become normal. Once in her chair, Tina was pale and hardly spoke. I said goodbye to her, and my grandmother drove me back home. Later that night, when my grandmother couldn’t get Tina back into bed again, she called my parents’ house—I was there for dinner. We’re calling an ambulance, I heard my father say. My grandmother and Tina had adhered to the same daily rituals for at least twenty-six years; the whole length of my life. Now, they had reached a point where this was untenable. The paramedics picked Tina up that night. Within a few days, she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. She passed away three weeks later, shortly after her 52nd birthday. My grandmother and I both, separately, took the books off our bookshelves and put them back in order.