Automated Detection and Differentiation of Stanford Type A and Type B Aortic Dissections in CTA Scans Using Deep Learning.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: To develop and validate a model system using deep learning algorithms for the automatic detection of type A aortic dissection (AD), and differentiate it from normal and type B AD patients.

METHODS

In this retrospective study, a deep learning model is developed, based on aortic computed tomography angiography (CTA) scans of 498 patients using training, validation and test sets of 398, 50 and 50 patients, respectively. An independent test set of 316 patients is used to validate and evaluate its performance.

RESULTS

Our model comprises two components. The first one is an objection detection model, which can identify the aorta from CTA. The second one is a dissection classification model, which can automatically detect the presence of aortic dissection and determine its type based on Stanford classification. Overall, the sensitivity and specificity for Type A AD were 0.969 and 0.982, for Type B AD were 0.946 and 0.996 and for normal cases were 0.988 and 1.000, respectively. The average processing time per CTA scan was 7.9 ± 2.8 s. (mean ± standard deviation).

CONCLUSIONS

This deep learning automatic model can accurately and quickly detect type A AD patients, and could serve as an imaging triage in an emergency setting and facilitate early intervention and surgery to decrease the mortality rates of type A AD patients.