• Kevin N Blackmon, Charles Florin, Luca Bogoni, Joshua W McCain, James D Koonce, Heon Lee, Gorka Bastarrika, Christian Thilo, Philip Costello, Marcos Salganicoff, and U Joseph Schoepf.
• Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Medical University of South Carolina, Ashley River Tower, MSC 226 25 Courtenay Drive, Charleston, SC 29401, USA.
• Eur Radiol. 2011 Jun 1;21(6):1214-23.

PurposeTo evaluate the effect of a computer-aided detection (CAD) algorithm on the performance of novice readers for detection of pulmonary embolism (PE) at CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA).Materials And MethodsWe included CTPA examinations of 79 patients (50 female, 52 ± 18 years). Studies were evaluated by two independent inexperienced readers who marked all vessels containing PE. After 3 months all studies were reevaluated by the same two readers, this time aided by CAD prototype. A consensus read by three expert radiologists served as the reference standard. Statistical analysis used χ(2) and McNemar testing.ResultsExpert consensus revealed 119 PEs in 32 studies. For PE detection, the sensitivity of CAD alone was 78%. Inexperienced readers' initial interpretations had an average per-PE sensitivity of 50%, which improved to 71% (p < 0.001) with CAD as a second reader. False positives increased from 0.18 to 0.25 per study (p = 0.03). Per-study, the readers initially detected 27/32 positive studies (84%); with CAD this number increased to 29.5 studies (92%; p = 0.125).ConclusionOur results suggest that CAD significantly improves the sensitivity of PE detection for inexperienced readers with a small but appreciable increase in the rate of false positives.

22 keywords...

hide…