Proposal for future diagnosis and management of vascular tumors by using automatic software for image processing and statistic prediction.
BACKGROUND
Infantile Hemangiomas (IH) are the most frequent tumors of vascular origin, and the differential diagnosis from vascular malformations is difficult to establish. Specific types of IH due to the location, dimensions and fast evolution, can determine important functional and esthetic sequels. To avoid these unfortunate consequences it is necessary to establish the exact appropriate moment to begin the treatment and decide which the most adequate therapeutic procedure is.


OBJECTIVE
Based on clinical data collected by a serial clinical observations correlated with imaging data, and processed by a computer-aided diagnosis system (CAD), the study intended to develop a treatment algorithm to accurately predict the best final results, from the esthetical and functional point of view, for a certain type of lesion.


RESULTS
The preliminary database was composed of 75 patients divided into 4 groups according to the treatment management they received: medical therapy, sclerotherapy, surgical excision and no treatment. The serial clinical observation was performed each month and all the data was processed by using CAD.


CONCLUSIONS
The project goal was to create a software that incorporated advanced methods to accurately measure the specific IH lesions, integrated medical information, statistical methods and computational methods to correlate this information with that obtained from the processing of images. Based on these correlations, a prediction mechanism of the evolution of hemangioma, which helped determine the best method of therapeutic intervention to minimize further complications, was established.
"Carol Davila" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania ; Department of Pediatric Surgery, "Maria Sklodowska Curie" Clinical Emergency Hospital for Children, Bucharest, Romania.
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Popescu
"Carol Davila" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania ; Department of General Surgery, "Sf. Ioan" Clinical Emergency Hospital, Bucharest, Romania.
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Draghici
Department of Pediatric Surgery, "Maria Sklodowska Curie" Clinical Emergency Hospital for Children, Bucharest, Romania.
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Secheli
Department of Pediatric Surgery, "Maria Sklodowska Curie" Clinical Emergency Hospital for Children, Bucharest, Romania.
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Secheli
Department of Pediatric Surgery, "Maria Sklodowska Curie" Clinical Emergency Hospital for Children, Bucharest, Romania.
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Codrescu
"Carol Davila" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania ; Department of Pediatric Surgery, "Maria Sklodowska Curie" Clinical Emergency Hospital for Children, Bucharest, Romania.
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Draghici
D017677:Age Distribution; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006391:Hemangioma / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008297:Male; D012984:Software; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D019043:Vascular Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*
color-coded duplex sonography; computer-aided diagnosis; esthetic sequels; infantile hemangioma