Multi-center Integrating Radiomics, Structured Reports, and Machine Learning Algorithms for Assisted Classification of COVID-19 in Lung Computed Tomography.

PURPOSE

To evaluate the classification performance of structured report features, radiomics, and machine learning (ML) models to differentiate between Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and other types of pneumonia using chest computed tomography (CT) scans.

METHODS

Sixty-four COVID-19 subjects and 64 subjects with non-COVID-19 pneumonia were selected. The data was split into two independent cohorts: one for the structured report, radiomic feature selection and model building ( = 73), and another for model validation ( = 55). Physicians performed readings with and without machine learning support. The model's sensitivity and specificity were calculated, and inter-rater reliability was assessed using Cohen's Kappa agreement coefficient.

RESULTS

Physicians performed with mean sensitivity and specificity of 83.4 and 64.3%, respectively. When assisted with machine learning, the mean sensitivity and specificity increased to 87.1 and 91.1%, respectively. In addition, machine learning improved the inter-rater reliability from moderate to substantial.

CONCLUSION

Integrating structured reports and radiomics promises assisted classification of COVID-19 in CT chest scans.