Using Artificial Intelligence for Automatic Segmentation of CT Lung Images in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Knowledge of gas volume, tissue mass and recruitability measured by the quantitative CT scan analysis (CT-qa) is important when setting the mechanical ventilation in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Yet, the manual segmentation of the lung requires a considerable workload. Our goal was to provide an automatic, clinically applicable and reliable lung segmentation procedure. Therefore, a convolutional neural network (CNN) was used to train an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm on 15 healthy subjects (1,302 slices), 100 ARDS patients (12,279 slices), and 20 COVID-19 (1,817 slices). Eighty percent of this populations was used for training, 20% for testing. The AI and manual segmentation at slice level were compared by intersection over union (IoU). The CT-qa variables were compared by regression and Bland Altman analysis. The AI-segmentation of a single patient required 5-10 s vs. 1-2 h of the manual. At slice level, the algorithm showed on the test set an IOU across all CT slices of 91.3 ± 10.0, 85.2 ± 13.9, and 84.7 ± 14.0%, and across all lung volumes of 96.3 ± 0.6, 88.9 ± 3.1, and 86.3 ± 6.5% for normal lungs, ARDS and COVID-19, respectively, with a U-shape in the performance: better in the lung middle region, worse at the apex and base. At patient level, on the test set, the total lung volume measured by AI and manual segmentation had a R ² of 0.99 and a bias -9.8 ml [CI: +56.0/-75.7 ml]. The recruitability measured with manual and AI-segmentation, as change in non-aerated tissue fraction had a bias of +0.3% [CI: +6.2/-5.5%] and -0.5% [CI: +2.3/-3.3%] expressed as change in well-aerated tissue fraction. The AI-powered lung segmentation provided fast and clinically reliable results. It is able to segment the lungs of seriously ill ARDS patients fully automatically.