• Xueyan Mei, Hao-Chih Lee, Kai-Yue Diao, Mingqian Huang, Bin Lin, Chenyu Liu, Zongyu Xie, Yixuan Ma, Philip M Robson, Michael Chung, Adam Bernheim, Venkatesh Mani, Claudia Calcagno, Kunwei Li, Shaolin Li, Hong Shan, Jian Lv, Tongtong Zhao, Junli Xia, Qihua Long, Sharon Steinberger, Adam Jacobi, Timothy Deyer, Marta Luksza, Fang Liu, Brent P Little, Zahi A Fayad, and Yang Yang.
• BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
• Nat. Med. 2020 Aug 1; 26 (8): 1224-1228.

AbstractFor diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a SARS-CoV-2 virus-specific reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test is routinely used. However, this test can take up to 2 d to complete, serial testing may be required to rule out the possibility of false negative results and there is currently a shortage of RT-PCR test kits, underscoring the urgent need for alternative methods for rapid and accurate diagnosis of patients with COVID-19. Chest computed tomography (CT) is a valuable component in the evaluation of patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nevertheless, CT alone may have limited negative predictive value for ruling out SARS-CoV-2 infection, as some patients may have normal radiological findings at early stages of the disease. In this study, we used artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to integrate chest CT findings with clinical symptoms, exposure history and laboratory testing to rapidly diagnose patients who are positive for COVID-19. Among a total of 905 patients tested by real-time RT-PCR assay and next-generation sequencing RT-PCR, 419 (46.3%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. In a test set of 279 patients, the AI system achieved an area under the curve of 0.92 and had equal sensitivity as compared to a senior thoracic radiologist. The AI system also improved the detection of patients who were positive for COVID-19 via RT-PCR who presented with normal CT scans, correctly identifying 17 of 25 (68%) patients, whereas radiologists classified all of these patients as COVID-19 negative. When CT scans and associated clinical history are available, the proposed AI system can help to rapidly diagnose COVID-19 patients.

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