Computer Vision Center, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Respiration. 2018;95(1):63-69. doi: 10.1159/000479888. Epub 2017 Oct 28.
Endoscopic estimation of the degree of stenosis in central airway obstruction is subjective and highly variable.
To determine the benefits of using SENSA (System for Endoscopic Stenosis Assessment), an image-based computational software, for obtaining objective stenosis index (SI) measurements among a group of expert bronchoscopists and general pulmonologists.
A total of 7 expert bronchoscopists and 7 general pulmonologists were enrolled to validate SENSA usage. The SI obtained by the physicians and by SENSA were compared with a reference SI to set their precision in SI computation. We used SENSA to efficiently obtain this reference SI in 11 selected cases of benign stenosis. A Web platform with three user-friendly microtasks was designed to gather the data. The users had to visually estimate the SI from videos with and without contours of the normal and the obstructed area provided by SENSA. The users were able to modify the SENSA contours to define the reference SI using morphometric bronchoscopy.
Visual SI estimation accuracy was associated with neither bronchoscopic experience (p = 0.71) nor the contours of the normal and the obstructed area provided by the system (p = 0.13). The precision of the SI by SENSA was 97.7% (95% CI: 92.4-103.7), which is significantly better than the precision of the SI by visual estimation (p < 0.001), with an improvement by at least 15%.
SENSA provides objective SI measurements with a precision of up to 99.5%, which can be calculated from any bronchoscope using an affordable scalable interface. Providing normal and obstructed contours on bronchoscopic videos does not improve physicians' visual estimation of the SI.
中央气道阻塞的狭窄程度的内镜评估是主观的，且高度可变。
确定使用基于图像的计算软件 SENSA（用于内镜狭窄评估的系统）在一组专家支气管镜医师和普通肺科医师中获得客观狭窄指数（SI）测量值的益处。
共招募了 7 名专家支气管镜医师和 7 名普通肺科医师来验证 SENSA 的使用。通过医生和 SENSA 获得的 SI 与参考 SI 进行比较，以确定其在 SI 计算中的精度。我们使用 SENSA 在 11 例良性狭窄的选定病例中高效地获得了这种参考 SI。设计了一个具有三个用户友好型微任务的 Web 平台来收集数据。用户必须从具有和不具有 SENSA 提供的正常和阻塞区域轮廓的视频中视觉估计 SI。用户可以使用形态学支气管镜修改 SENSA 轮廓以定义参考 SI。
视觉 SI 估计准确性与支气管镜经验无关（p = 0.71），也与系统提供的正常和阻塞区域的轮廓无关（p = 0.13）。SENSA 的 SI 精度为 97.7%（95%CI：92.4-103.7），明显优于视觉估计的 SI 精度（p < 0.001），至少提高了 15%。
SENSA 提供了高达 99.5%的精度的客观 SI 测量值，可以使用负担得起的可扩展接口从任何支气管镜计算得出。在支气管镜视频上提供正常和阻塞轮廓并不能提高医生对 SI 的视觉估计。
