Copyright: ©Author(s) 2026. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. No commercial re-use. See permissions. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc.
World J Radiol. Mar 28, 2026; 18(3): 118126
Published online Mar 28, 2026. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v18.i3.118126
Published online Mar 28, 2026. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v18.i3.118126
Letter to the Editor: Evidence for a two-step species-level pulmonary nocardiosis diagnostic approach
John Halphen Jr, Mohadese Ahmadzade, Ashkan Berenji, Mohammad Ghasemi-Rad, Department of Radiology, Section of Interventional Radiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Babith Mankidy, Department of Pulmonary, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Author contributions: Halphen J Jr contributed to conceptualization, designed the editorial, wrote the draft, and made edits; Ghasemi-Rad M contributed to conceptualization, designed the manuscript, supervision, reviewing, and editing; Ahmadzade M, Mankidy B, and Berenji A contributed to literature review and wrote the draft; all authors have read and approved the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Corresponding author: Mohammad Ghasemi-Rad, MD, Department of Radiology, Section of Interventional Radiology, Baylor College of Medicine, 1 Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030, United States. mohammad.ghasemirad@bcm.edu
Received: December 29, 2025
Revised: January 8, 2026
Accepted: January 12, 2026
Published online: March 28, 2026
Processing time: 92 Days and 10.9 Hours
Revised: January 8, 2026
Accepted: January 12, 2026
Published online: March 28, 2026
Processing time: 92 Days and 10.9 Hours
Core Tip
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.