Objective

The aim of this study was to evaluate an automatic, deep learning based method (Augmented Radiology for Vascular Aneurysm [ARVA]), to detect and assess maximum aortic diameter, providing cross sectional outer to outer aortic wall measurements.

Methods

Accurate external aortic wall diameter measurement is performed along the entire aorta, from the ascending aorta to the iliac bifurcations, on both pre- and post-operative contrast enhanced computed tomography angiography (CTA) scans. A training database of 489 CTAs was used to train a pipeline of neural networks for automatic external aortic wall measurements. Another database of 62 CTAs, including controls, aneurysmal aortas, and aortic dissections scanned before and/or after endovascular or open repair, was used for validation. The measurements of maximum external aortic wall diameter made by ARVA were compared with those of seven clinicians on this validation dataset.

Results

The median absolute difference with respect to expert’s measurements ranged from 1 mm to 2 mm among all annotators, while ARVA reported a median absolute difference of 1.2 mm.

Conclusion

The performance of the automatic maximum aortic diameter method falls within the interannotator variability, making it a potentially reliable solution for assisting clinical practice.

中文翻译：

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术前和术后主动脉瘤最大直径测量：人工智能完全自动化

客观的

本研究的目的是评估一种基于深度学习的自动方法（血管动脉瘤增强放射学 [ARVA]），以检测和评估最大主动脉直径，提供从外到外主动脉壁的横截面测量。

方法

在术前和术后对比增强计算机断层扫描血管造影 (CTA) 扫描中，沿整个主动脉（从升主动脉到髂分叉）进行准确的外主动脉壁直径测量。使用 489 个 CTA 的训练数据库来训练用于自动外主动脉壁测量的神经网络管道。另一个包含 62 个 CTA 的数据库，包括对照、动脉瘤主动脉和血管内或开放修复之前和/或之后扫描的主动脉夹层，用于验证。在此验证数据集上，将 ARVA 测量的最大外主动脉壁直径与七位临床医生的测量值进行了比较。

结果

在所有注释者中，专家测量值的中位绝对差异为 1 mm 至 2 mm，而 ARVA 报告的中位绝对差异为 1.2 mm。

结论

自动最大主动脉直径方法的性能属于注释器间变异性，使其成为辅助临床实践的潜在可靠解决方案。