Publication Name	World Journal of Radiology
Manuscript ID	118126
Country	United States

Category	Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
Manuscript Type	Letter to the Editor
Article Title	Evidence for a two-step species-level pulmonary nocardiosis diagnostic approach
Manuscript Source	Unsolicited Manuscript
All Author List	John Halphen Jr, Mohadese Ahmadzade, Babith Mankidy, Ashkan Berenji and Mohammad Ghasemi-Rad
Funding Agency and Grant Number
Corresponding Author	Mohammad Ghasemi-Rad, MD, Department of Radiology, Section of Interventional Radiology, Baylor College of Medicine, 1 Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, United States. mohammad.ghasemirad@bcm.edu
Key Words	Bacterial cultures; Chest computed tomography; Metagenomic next-generation sequencing; Nocardia; Pulmonary nocardiosis; Radiographic presentation
Core Tip	The current understanding of pulmonary nocardiosis as presenting with heterogeneous computed tomography (CT) findings is changing, as in their recent work, Wang et al recently suggested a potential role for radiology in species-level diagnosis. By integrating high-resolution CT and molecular-based diagnostics, the authors provide evidence for a two-step diagnostic workflow for species identification in pulmonary nocardiosis, using imaging to rapidly build species-level suspicion followed by confirmation with metagenomic next-generation sequencing.
Citation	Halphen Jr J, Ahmadzade M, Mankidy B, Berenji A, Ghasemi-Rad M. Evidence for a two-step species-level pulmonary nocardiosis diagnostic approach. World J Radiol 2026; In press

Received	2025-12-29 06:33
Peer-Review Started	2025-12-29 06:34
First Decision by Editorial Office Director	2026-01-08 09:20
Return for Revision	2026-01-08 09:20
Revised	2026-01-08 17:28
Publication Fee Transferred
Second Decision by Editor	2026-01-12 02:38
Second Decision by Editor-in-Chief
Final Decision by Editorial Office Director	2026-01-12 12:21
Articles in Press	2026-01-12 12:21
Edit the Manuscript by Language Editor
Typeset the Manuscript

ISSN	1949-8470 (online)
Open Access	This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Copyright	© The Author(s) 2026. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Permissions	For details, please visit: http://www.wjgnet.com/bpg/gerinfo/207
Publisher	Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA
Website	http://www.wjgnet.com