Automated precision localization of peripherally inserted central catheter tip through model-agnostic multi-stage...

Peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) have been widely used as one of the representative central venous lines (CVCs) due to their long-term intravascular access with low infectivity. However, PICCs have a fatal drawback of a high frequency of tip mispositions, increasing the risk of puncture, embolism, and complications such as cardiac arrhythmias. To automatically and precisely detect it, various attempts have been made by using the latest deep learning (DL) technologies. However, even with these approaches, it is still practically difficult to determine the tip location because the multiple fragments phenomenon (MFP) occurs in the process of predicting and extracting the PICC line required before predicting the tip.

This study aimed to develop a system generally applied to existing models and to restore the PICC line more exactly by removing the MFs of the model output, thereby precisely localizing the actual tip position for detecting its misposition.

To achieve this, we proposed a multi-stage DL-based framework post-processing the PICC line extraction result of the existing technology. Our method consists of the following three stages: 1. Existing PICC line segmentation network for a baseline, 2. Patch-based PICC line refinement network, 3. PICC line reconnection network. The proposed second and third-stage models address MFs caused by the sparseness of the PICC line and the line disconnection due to confusion with anatomical structures respectively, thereby enhancing tip detection.

To verify the objective performance of the proposed MFCN, internal validation and external validation were conducted. For internal validation, learning (130 samples) and verification (150 samples) were performed with 280 data, including PICC among Chest X-ray (CXR) images taken at our institution. External validation was conducted using a public dataset called the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists (RANZCR), and training (130 samples) and validation (150 samples) were performed with 280 data of CXR images, including PICC, which has the same number as that for internal validation. The performance was compared by root mean squared error (RMSE) and the ratio of single fragment images (Ratio_SFI) (i.e., the rate at which model predicts PICC as multiple sub-lines) according to whether or not MFCN is applied to seven conventional models (i.e., FCDN, UNET, AUNET, TUNET, FCDN-HT, UNET-ELL, and UNET-RPN). In internal validation, when MFCN was applied to the existing single model, MFP was improved by an average of 45 %. The RMSE improved over 63% from an average of 27.54 mm (17.16 to 35.80 mm) to 9.77 mm (9.11 to 10.98 mm). In external validation, when MFCN was applied, the MFP incidence rate decreased by an average of 32% and the RMSE decreased by an average of 65%. Therefore, by applying the proposed MFCN, we observed the consistent detection performance improvement of PICC tip location compared to the existing model.

In this study, we applied the proposed technique to the existing technique and demonstrated that it provides high tip detection performance, proving its high versatility and superiority. Therefore, we believe, in countries and regions where radiologists are scarce, that the proposed DL approach will be able to effectively detect PICC misposition on behalf of radiologists.