Artificial intelligence for the detection of COVID-19 pneumonia on chest CT using multinational datasets

Abstract

Chest CT is emerging as a valuable diagnostic tool for clinical management of COVID-19 associated lung disease. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to aid in rapid evaluation of CT scans for differentiation of COVID-19 findings from other clinical entities. Here we show that a series of deep learning algorithms, trained in a diverse multinational cohort of 1280 patients to localize parietal pleura/lung parenchyma followed by classification of COVID-19 pneumonia, can achieve up to 90.8% accuracy, with 84% sensitivity and 93% specificity, as evaluated in an independent test set (not included in training and validation) of 1337 patients. Normal controls included chest CTs from oncology, emergency, and pneumonia-related indications. The false positive rate in 140 patients with laboratory confirmed other (non COVID-19) pneumonias was 10%. AI-based algorithms can readily identify CT scans with COVID-19 associated pneumonia, as well as distinguish non-COVID related pneumonias with high specificity in diverse patient populations.

Association of AI quantified COVID-19 chest CT and patient outcome

“…The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak at the end of 2019, which results from contracting an extremely contagious beta-coronavirus, has spread worldwide and is responsible for the latest pandemic in human history. Prior studies report frequent use of chest computed tomography (CT) in patients suspicious of pneumonia, including COVID-19 [ 1 , 4 , 10 , 14 , 16 ]. Chest CT is often recommended to assess disease severity and monitor progression in patients with moderate to severe pneumonia as well as to assess suspected complications.…”

“…Chest CT is often recommended to assess disease severity and monitor progression in patients with moderate to severe pneumonia as well as to assess suspected complications. In sites with limited availability of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and high disease prevalence, chest CT is also used in diagnosis for patients with suspected COVID-19 [ 1 , 4 , 10 , 14 , 16 ].…”

COVID-19 and Artificial Intelligence: the pandemic pacifier

“…An AI based CT diagnosis, which demonstrates an accuracy level 95%, proves to have a promising role in the diagnosis of the disease. On a gross spectrum the accuracy was 90.8%, which is superior to RT-PCR with a sensitivity of 60-70% [22]. This study highlights the need for a combination of RT-PCR and CT scans in the detection of COVID19.…”

“…Owing to its increased availability, RT-PCR is the gold standard in diagnosis. CT scans have diagnosed patients in RT-PCR negative cases [22]. An AI based CT diagnosis, which demonstrates an accuracy level 95%, proves to have a promising role in the diagnosis of the disease.…”

Biological characteristics and biomarkers of novel SARS-CoV-2 facilitated rapid development and implementation of diagnostic tools and surveillance measures

“…Emerging artificial intelligence techniques useful for distinguishing between these observations may reinforce support in the direction of practice of CT scan in the diagnostic settings ( Mei et al, 2020 ). A recent report developed AI algorithm and evaluated for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 using chest CT scans applicable for data from a worldwide and from all sort of institution datasets ( Harmon et al, 2020 ). This study showed the possibility of preparing robust models that can achieve accuracy up to 90% in diverse test populations, with retaining high specificity in other related pneumonia infections, and thus validated sufficient predictability to unnoticed patients.…”