Preliminary study on the application of deep learning system to diagnosis of Sjögren's syndrome on CT images

This study estimated the diagnostic performance of a deep learning system for detection of Sjögren's syndrome (SjS) on CT, and compared it with the performance of radiologists.

CT images were assessed from 25 patients confirmed to have SjS based on the both Japanese criteria and American-European Consensus Group criteria and 25 control subjects with no parotid gland abnormalities who were examined for other diseases. 10 CT slices were obtained for each patient. From among the total of 500 CT images, 400 images (200 from 20 SjS patients and 200 from 20 control subjects) were employed as the training data set and 100 images (50 from 5 SjS patients and 50 from 5 control subjects) were used as the test data set. The performance of a deep learning system for diagnosing SjS from the CT images was compared with the diagnoses made by six radiologists (three experienced and three inexperienced radiologists).

The accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of the deep learning system were 96.0%, 100% and 92.0%, respectively. The corresponding values of experienced radiologists were 98.3%, 99.3% and 97.3% being equivalent to the deep learning, while those of inexperienced radiologists were 83.5%, 77.9% and 89.2%. The area under the curve of inexperienced radiologists were significantly different from those of the deep learning system and the experienced radiologists.

The deep learning system showed a high diagnostic performance for SjS, suggesting that it could possibly be used for diagnostic support when interpreting CT images.