1. Value of minimum intensity projections for chest CT in COVID-19 patients.
- Author
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Booz C, Vogl TJ, Joseph Schoepf U, Caruso D, Inserra MC, Yel I, Martin SS, Bucher AM, Lenga L, Caudo D, Schreckenbach T, Schoell N, Huegel C, Stratmann J, Vasa-Nicotera M, Rachovitsky-Duarte DE, Laghi A, De Santis D, Mazziotti S, D'Angelo T, and Albrecht MH
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Female, Humans, Internationality, Male, Middle Aged, Reproducibility of Results, Retrospective Studies, SARS-CoV-2, Sensitivity and Specificity, Young Adult, COVID-19 diagnostic imaging, Lung diagnostic imaging, Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted methods, Tomography, X-Ray Computed methods
- Abstract
Purpose: To investigate whether minimum intensity projection (MinIP) reconstructions enable more accurate depiction of pulmonary ground-glass opacity (GGO) compared to standard transverse sections and multiplanar reformat (MPR) series in patients with suspected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)., Method: In this multinational study, chest CT scans of 185 patients were retrospectively analyzed. Diagnostic accuracy, diagnostic confidence, image quality regarding the assessment of GGO, as well as subjective time-efficiency of MinIP and standard MPR series were analyzed based on the assessment of six radiologists. In addition, the suitability for COVID-19 evaluation, image quality regarding GGO and subjective time-efficiency in clinical routine was assessed by five clinicians., Results: The reference standard revealed a total of 149 CT scans with pulmonary GGO. MinIP reconstructions yielded significantly higher sensitivity (99.9 % vs 95.6 %), specificity (95.8 % vs 86.1 %) and accuracy (99.1 % vs 93.8 %) for assessing of GGO compared with standard MPR series. MinIP reconstructions achieved significantly higher ratings by radiologists concerning diagnostic confidence (medians, 5.00 vs 4.00), image quality (medians, 4.00 vs 4.00), contrast between GGO and unaffected lung parenchyma (medians, 5.00 vs 4.00) as well as subjective time-efficiency (medians, 5.00 vs 4.00) compared with MPR-series (all P < .001). Clinicians preferred MinIP reconstructions for COVID-19 assessment (medians, 5.00 vs 3.00), image quality regarding GGO (medians, 5.00 vs 3.00) and subjective time-efficiency in clinical routine (medians, 5.00 vs 3.00)., Conclusions: MinIP reconstructions improve the assessment of COVID-19 in chest CT compared to standard images and may be suitable for routine application., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
- Published
- 2021
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