Artificial intelligence improves resident detection of pediatric and young adult upper extremity fractures

We wished to evaluate if an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm ( https://www.childfx.com ) could improve performance of (1) subspecialized musculoskeletal radiologists, (2) radiology residents, and (3) pediatric residents in detecting pediatric and young adult upper extremity fractures.

A set of evaluation radiographs drawn from throughout the upper extremity (elbow, hand/finger, humerus/shoulder/clavicle, wrist/forearm, and clavicle) from 240 unique patients at a single hospital was constructed (mean age 11.3 years, range 0-22 years, 37.9% female). Two fellowship-trained musculoskeletal radiologists, three radiology residents, and two pediatric residents were recruited as readers. Each reader interpreted each case initially without and then subsequently 3-4 weeks later with AI assistance and recorded if/where fracture was present.

Access to AI significantly improved area under the receiver operator curve (AUC) of radiology residents (0.768 [0.730-0.806] without AI to 0.876 [0.845-0.908] with AI, P < 0.001) and pediatric residents (0.706 [0.659-0.753] without AI to 0.844 [0.805-0.883] with AI, P < 0.001) in identifying fracture, respectively. There was no evidence of improvement for subspecialized musculoskeletal radiology attendings in identifying fracture (AUC 0.867 [0.832-0.902] to 0.890 [0.856-0.924], P = 0.093). There was no evidence of difference between overall resident AUC with AI and subspecialist AUC without AI (resident with AI 0.863, attending without AI AUC 0.867, P = 0.856). Overall physician radiograph interpretation time was significantly lower with AI (38.9 s with AI vs. 52.1 s without AI, P = 0.030).

An openly accessible AI model significantly improved radiology and pediatric resident accuracy in detecting pediatric upper extremity fractures.