ArticleQuantitative imaging in medicine and surgery2026
Age-related changes in the parotid gland: a computed tomography-based radiomics study.
Article in Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Age-related degeneration of parotid glands impacts oral and systemic health, yet non-invasive assessment remains limited. This study characterizes parotid gland aging using computed tomography (CT)-based radiomics for the early detection of glandular dysfunction or diseases. Methods: This retrospective study included 320 healthy individuals (aged 12-84 years), stratified into four age groups (adolescent: <25, young adult: 25-44, middle-aged: 45-59, elderly: >59 years) with balanced sex distribution. Axial medial-lateral diameter (AMLD) and mean Hounsfield unit (HU) attenuation were manually measured on axial CT slices. Three-dimensional (3D) radiomic features were extracted from automatically segmented glands via PyRadiomics platform. Dimensionality reduction was performed by probabilistic principal component analysis (PCA) and unsupervised K-means clustering was applied to shape-, first-order-, and texture-related features to identify age-associated patterns. Results: AMLD increased significantly with age from 32.1±3.5 mm in the adolescent group to 40.3±4.1 mm in the elderly group (P<0.05). Similarly, gland volume enlarged significantly, with males exhibiting larger volumes than females across all groups (P<0.05). In contrast, mean HU declined with age from -2.5±6.8 to -15.7±10.2 HU (P<0.05), indicating reduced tissue density and homogeneity. Radiomic uniformity also decreased significantly in adults compared to adolescents (P<0.05). Unsupervised clustering revealed a marked age-dependent shift: Cluster 1 (small, spherical glands) comprised 55.6% of adolescent glands but only 8.8% of elderly glands (P<0.05), whereas Clusters 3 and 4 (large, irregular glands) increased from 10.9% to 48.8% (P<0.05). Conclusions: CT-based radiomics captured age-related morphological and structural changes in parotid glands. These findings support the application of CT as a non-invasive tool for monitoring parotid gland aging and may inform the early detection of age-associated glandular dysfunction.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.