Computer-assisted detection of acute pulmonary embolism at CT pulmonary angiography in children and young adults: a diagnostic performance analysis

Abstract

Background To diagnose pulmonary embolism (PE) in children and adults since evaluating tiny pulmonary vasculature beyond segmental level is a challenging and demanding task with thousands of images. Purpose To evaluate the effect of computer-assisted detection (CAD) on acute PE on CTPA in children and young adults by readers with varying experience levels. Material and Methods Six radiologists were retrospectively divided into three groups according to experience levels and assessed the CTPA studies on a per-emboli basis. All readers identified independently the PE presence, and ranked diagnostic confidence on a 5-point scale with and without CAD. Reading time, sensitivities, specificities, accuracies, positive predictive values (PPVs), and negative predictive values (NPVs) were calculated for each reading. Results The sensitivities and NPVs differed significantly in most readers ( P = 0.004, 0.001, 0.010, 0.010, and 0.012 for sensitivities and P = 0.011, 0.003, 0.016, 0.017, and 0.019 for NPVs) except for reader 6 ( P = 0.148 and 0.165, respectively), and the accuracies of all readers differed significantly (all P < 0.05) in peripheral PE (beyond segmental level) detection readings with CAD versus without CAD between two reading methods. The overall time using CAD was longer than those without CAD (76.6 ± 54.4 s vs. 49.4 ± 17.7 s, P = 0.000) for all readers. Significant differences were found for confidence scores in inter-group measurements with CAD ( P = 0.045) and without CAD ( P < 0.001). Conclusion At the expense of longer reading time, the use of the CAD algorithms improves sensitivities, NPVs, and the accuracies of readers in peripheral PE detection, especially for readers with a poor level of interpretation experience.