• Yuki Himoto, Akihiko Sakata, Mitsuhiro Kirita, Takashi Hiroi, Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, Kenji Kubo, Hyunjin Kim, Azusa Nishimoto, Chikara Maeda, Akira Kawamura, Nobuhiro Komiya, and Shigeaki Umeoka.
• Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Japanese Red Cross Wakayama Medical Center, Wakayama, 6408558, Japan. yukihimoto@gmail.com.
• Jpn J Radiol. 2020 May 1; 38 (5): 400-406.

PurposeTo evaluate the diagnostic performance of chest CT to differentiate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia in non-high-epidemic area in Japan.Materials And MethodsThis retrospective study included 21 patients clinically suspected COVID-19 pneumonia and underwent chest CT more than 3 days after the symptom onset: six patients confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia by real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and 15 patients proved uninfected. Using a Likert scale and its receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, two radiologists (R1/R2) evaluated the diagnostic performance of the five CT criteria: (1) ground glass opacity (GGO)-predominant lesions, (2) GGO- and peripheral-predominant lesions, (3) bilateral GGO-predominant lesions; (4) bilateral GGO- and peripheral-predominant lesions, and (5) bilateral GGO- and peripheral-predominant lesions without nodules, airway abnormalities, pleural effusion, and mediastinal lymphadenopathy.ResultsAll patients confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia had bilateral GGO- and peripheral-predominant lesions without airway abnormalities, mediastinal lymphadenopathy, and pleural effusion. The five CT criteria showed moderate to excellent diagnostic performance with area under the curves (AUCs) ranging 0.77-0.88 for R1 and 0.78-0.92 for R2. The criterion (e) showed the highest AUC.ConclusionChest CT would play a supplemental role to differentiate COVID-19 pneumonia from other respiratory diseases presenting with similar symptoms in a clinical setting.

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