Accuracy of a deep neural network for automated pulmonary embolism detection on dedicated CT pulmonary angiograms

To assess the performance of a Deep Neural Network (DNN)-based prototype algorithm for automated PE detection on CTPA scans.

Patients who had previously undergone CTPA with three different systems (SOMATOM Force, go.Top, and Definition AS; Siemens Healthineers, Forchheim, Germany) because of suspected PE from September 2022 to January 2023 were retrospectively enrolled in this study (n = 1,000, 58.8 % women). For detailed evaluation, all PE were divided into three location-based subgroups: central arteries, lobar branches, and peripheral regions. Clinical reports served as ground truth. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy were determined to evaluate the performance of DNN-based PE detection.

Cases were excluded due to incomplete data (n = 32), inconclusive report (n = 17), insufficient contrast detected in the pulmonary trunk (n = 40), or failure of the preprocessing algorithms (n = 8). Therefore, the final cohort included 903 cases with a PE prevalence of 12 % (n = 110). The model achieved a sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV of 84.6, 95.1, 70.5, and 97.8 %, respectively, and delivered an overall accuracy of 93.8 %. Among the false positive cases (n = 39), common sources of error included lung masses, pneumonia, and contrast flow artifacts. Common sources of false negatives (n = 17) included chronic and subsegmental PEs.

The proposed DNN-based algorithm provides excellent performance for the detection of PE, suggesting its potential utility to support radiologists in clinical reading and exam prioritization.