TY - JOUR
T1 - Artificial Intelligence-based Quantification of Pleural Plaque Volume and Association With Lung Function in Asbestos-exposed Patients
AU - Groot Lipman, Kevin B W
AU - Boellaard, Thierry N
AU - de Gooijer, Cornedine J
AU - Bogveradze, Nino
AU - Hong, Eun Kyoung
AU - Landolfi, Federica
AU - Castagnoli, Francesca
AU - Vakhidova, Nargiza
AU - Smesseim, Illaa
AU - van der Heijden, Ferdi
AU - Beets-Tan, Regina G H
AU - Wittenberg, Rianne
AU - Bodalal, Zuhir
AU - Burgers, Jacobus A
AU - Trebeschi, Stefano
PY - 2023/11/1
Y1 - 2023/11/1
N2 - PURPOSE: Pleural plaques (PPs) are morphologic manifestations of long-term asbestos exposure. The relationship between PP and lung function is not well understood, whereas the time-consuming nature of PP delineation to obtain volume impedes research. To automate the laborious task of delineation, we aimed to develop automatic artificial intelligence (AI)-driven segmentation of PP. Moreover, we aimed to explore the relationship between pleural plaque volume (PPV) and pulmonary function tests. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Radiologists manually delineated PPs retrospectively in computed tomography (CT) images of patients with occupational exposure to asbestos (May 2014 to November 2019). We trained an AI model with a no-new-UNet architecture. The Dice Similarity Coefficient quantified the overlap between AI and radiologists. The Spearman correlation coefficient (r) was used for the correlation between PPV and pulmonary function test metrics. When recorded, these were vital capacity (VC), forced vital capacity (FVC), and diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO). RESULTS: We trained the AI system on 422 CT scans in 5 folds, each time with a different fold (n = 84 to 85) as a test set. On these independent test sets combined, the correlation between the predicted volumes and the ground truth was r = 0.90, and the median overlap was 0.71 Dice Similarity Coefficient. We found weak to moderate correlations with PPV for VC (n = 80, r = -0.40) and FVC (n = 82, r = -0.38), but no correlation for DLCO (n = 84, r = -0.09). When the cohort was split on the median PPV, we observed statistically significantly lower VC (P = 0.001) and FVC (P = 0.04) values for the higher PPV patients, but not for DLCO (P = 0.19). CONCLUSION: We successfully developed an AI algorithm to automatically segment PP in CT images to enable fast volume extraction. Moreover, we have observed that PPV is associated with loss in VC and FVC.
AB - PURPOSE: Pleural plaques (PPs) are morphologic manifestations of long-term asbestos exposure. The relationship between PP and lung function is not well understood, whereas the time-consuming nature of PP delineation to obtain volume impedes research. To automate the laborious task of delineation, we aimed to develop automatic artificial intelligence (AI)-driven segmentation of PP. Moreover, we aimed to explore the relationship between pleural plaque volume (PPV) and pulmonary function tests. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Radiologists manually delineated PPs retrospectively in computed tomography (CT) images of patients with occupational exposure to asbestos (May 2014 to November 2019). We trained an AI model with a no-new-UNet architecture. The Dice Similarity Coefficient quantified the overlap between AI and radiologists. The Spearman correlation coefficient (r) was used for the correlation between PPV and pulmonary function test metrics. When recorded, these were vital capacity (VC), forced vital capacity (FVC), and diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO). RESULTS: We trained the AI system on 422 CT scans in 5 folds, each time with a different fold (n = 84 to 85) as a test set. On these independent test sets combined, the correlation between the predicted volumes and the ground truth was r = 0.90, and the median overlap was 0.71 Dice Similarity Coefficient. We found weak to moderate correlations with PPV for VC (n = 80, r = -0.40) and FVC (n = 82, r = -0.38), but no correlation for DLCO (n = 84, r = -0.09). When the cohort was split on the median PPV, we observed statistically significantly lower VC (P = 0.001) and FVC (P = 0.04) values for the higher PPV patients, but not for DLCO (P = 0.19). CONCLUSION: We successfully developed an AI algorithm to automatically segment PP in CT images to enable fast volume extraction. Moreover, we have observed that PPV is associated with loss in VC and FVC.
U2 - 10.1097/RTI.0000000000000759
DO - 10.1097/RTI.0000000000000759
M3 - Article
SN - 0883-5993
JO - Journal of Thoracic Imaging
JF - Journal of Thoracic Imaging
ER -