Application of deep learning in the diagnosis and evaluation of ulcerative colitis disease severity

Achieving endoscopic and histological remission is a critical treatment objective in ulcerative colitis (UC). Nevertheless, interobserver variability can significantly impact overall assessment performance.

We aimed to develop a deep learning algorithm for the real-time and objective evaluation of endoscopic disease activity and prediction of histological remission in UC.

This is a retrospective diagnostic study.

Two convolutional neural network (CNN) models were constructed and trained using 12,257 endoscopic images and biopsy results sourced from 1124 UC patients who underwent colonoscopy at a single center from January 2018 to December 2022. Mayo Endoscopy Subscore (MES) and UC Endoscopic Index of Severity Score (UCEIS) assessments were conducted by two experienced and independent reviewers. Model performance was evaluated in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, and positive predictive value. The output of the CNN models was also compared with the corresponding histological results to assess histological remission prediction performance.

The MES-CNN model achieved 97.04% accuracy in diagnosing endoscopic remission of UC, while the MES-CNN and UCEIS-CNN models achieved 90.15% and 85.29% accuracy, respectively, in evaluating endoscopic severity of UC. For predicting histological remission, the CNN models achieved accuracy and kappa values of 91.28% and 0.826, respectively, attaining higher accuracy than human endoscopists (87.69%).

The proposed artificial intelligence model, based on MES and UCEIS evaluations from expert gastroenterologists, offered precise assessment of inflammation in UC endoscopic images and reliably predicted histological remission.