Detection of COVID-19 Using Deep Learning Algorithms on Chest Radiographs.

PURPOSE

To evaluate the performance of a deep learning (DL) algorithm for the detection of COVID-19 on chest radiographs (CXR).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In this retrospective study, a DL model was trained on 112,120 CXR images with 14 labeled classifiers (ChestX-ray14) and fine-tuned using initial CXR on hospital admission of 509 patients, who had undergone COVID-19 reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The test set consisted of a CXR on presentation of 248 individuals suspected of COVID-19 pneumonia between February 16 and March 3, 2020 from 4 centers (72 RT-PCR positives and 176 RT-PCR negatives). The CXR were independently reviewed by 3 radiologists and using the DL algorithm. Diagnostic performance was compared with radiologists' performance and was assessed by area under the receiver operating characteristics (AUC).

RESULTS

The median age of the subjects in the test set was 61 (interquartile range: 39 to 79) years (51% male). The DL algorithm achieved an AUC of 0.81, sensitivity of 0.85, and specificity of 0.72 in detecting COVID-19 using RT-PCR as the reference standard. On subgroup analyses, the model achieved an AUC of 0.79, sensitivity of 0.80, and specificity of 0.74 in detecting COVID-19 in patients presented with fever or respiratory systems and an AUC of 0.87, sensitivity of 0.85, and specificity of 0.81 in distinguishing COVID-19 from other forms of pneumonia. The algorithm significantly outperforms human readers (P<0.001 using DeLong test) with higher sensitivity (P=0.01 using McNemar test).

CONCLUSIONS

A DL algorithm (COV19NET) for the detection of COVID-19 on chest radiographs can potentially be an effective tool in triaging patients, particularly in resource-stretched health-care systems.