Determining the scanning range of coronary computed tomography angiography based on deep learning

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is essential for diagnosing coronary artery disease as it provides detailed images of the heart's blood vessels to identify blockages or abnormalities. Traditionally, determining the computed tomography (CT) scanning range has relied on manual methods due to limited automation in this area.

To develop and evaluate a novel deep learning approach to automate the determination of CCTA scan ranges using anteroposterior scout images.

A retrospective analysis was conducted on chest CT data from 1388 patients at the Radiology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of a university-affiliated hospital, collected between February 27 and March 27, 2024. A deep learning model was trained on anteroposterior scout images with annotations based on CCTA standards. The dataset was split into training (672 cases), validation (167 cases), and test (167 cases) sets to ensure robust model evaluation.

The study demonstrated exceptional performance on the test set, achieving a mean average precision (mAP50) of 0.995 and mAP50-95 of 0.994 for determining CCTA scan ranges.

This study demonstrates that: (1) Anteroposterior scout images can effectively estimate CCTA scan ranges; and (2) Estimates can be dynamically adjusted to meet the needs of various medical institutions.