An artificial intelligence (AI) programme accurately predicts the risk that lung nodules detected on screening CT will become cancerous, according to a new study.
Researchers developed an algorithm for lung nodule assessment using deep learning – an AI application capable of finding certain patterns in imaging data. They trained the algorithm on CT images of more than 16,000 nodules, including 1249 malignancies, from the US National Lung Screening Trial.
They validated the algorithm on three large sets of imaging data of nodules from the Danish Lung Cancer Screening Trial.
The deep learning algorithm outperformed the established Pan-Canadian Early Detection of Lung Cancer model for lung nodule malignancy risk estimation. It performed comparably to 11 clinicians, including four thoracic radiologists, five radiology residents and two pulmonologists.
The researchers plan to continue improving the algorithm by incorporating clinical parameters like age, sex and smoking history.
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