Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34698988›Full record

ArticleInternational journal of computer assisted radiology and surgery2022

Quantification of pulmonary involvement in COVID-19 pneumonia by means of a cascade of two U-nets: training and assessment on multiple datasets using different annotation criteria.

Francesca Lizzi, Abramo Agosti, Francesca Brero, Raffaella Fiamma Cabini, Maria Evelina Fantacci, Silvia Figini, Alessandro Lascialfari, Francesco Laruina, Piernicola Oliva, Stefano Piffer and 4 more

Open access · hybridAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in International journal of computer assisted radiology and surgery, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
10citing papers in PubMed
2.5field-weighted citation impact, top 10% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

10 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.

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  9. COVLIAS 1.0Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

14 authors at 7 institutions in 1 country.

Francesca LizziScuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. francesca.lizzi@sns.it.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0900-0421
Abramo AgostiDepartment of Mathematics, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
Francesca BreroINFN, Pavia division, Pavia, Italy.
Raffaella Fiamma CabiniINFN, Pavia division, Pavia, Italy.
Maria Evelina FantacciNational Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), Pisa division, Pisa, Italy.
Silvia FiginiINFN, Pavia division, Pavia, Italy.
Alessandro LascialfariINFN, Pavia division, Pavia, Italy.
Francesco LaruinaScuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy.
Piernicola OlivaDepartment of Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy.
Stefano PifferDepartment of Biomedical Experimental Clinical Science "M. Serio", University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Ian PostumaINFN, Pavia division, Pavia, Italy.
Lisa RinaldiINFN, Pavia division, Pavia, Italy.
Cinzia TalamontiDepartment of Biomedical Experimental Clinical Science "M. Serio", University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Alessandra ReticoNational Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), Pisa division, Pisa, Italy.
University of Pavia · ITScuola Normale Superiore · ITUniversity of Florence · ITIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pavia · ITIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pisa · ITUniversity of Pisa · ITUniversity of Sassari · IT

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

purposeThis study aims at exploiting artificial intelligence (AI) for the identification, segmentation and quantification of COVID-19 pulmonary lesions. The limited data availability and the annotation quality are relevant factors in training AI-methods. We investigated the effects of using multiple datasets, heterogeneously populated and annotated according to different criteria.

methodsWe developed an automated analysis pipeline, the LungQuant system, based on a cascade of two U-nets. The first one (U-net[Formula: see text]) is devoted to the identification of the lung parenchyma; the second one (U-net[Formula: see text]) acts on a bounding box enclosing the segmented lungs to identify the areas affected by COVID-19 lesions. Different public datasets were used to train the U-nets and to evaluate their segmentation performances, which have been quantified in terms of the Dice Similarity Coefficients. The accuracy in predicting the CT-Severity Score (CT-SS) of the LungQuant system has been also evaluated.

resultsBoth the volumetric DSC (vDSC) and the accuracy showed a dependency on the annotation quality of the released data samples. On an independent dataset (COVID-19-CT-Seg), both the vDSC and the surface DSC (sDSC) were measured between the masks predicted by LungQuant system and the reference ones. The vDSC (sDSC) values of 0.95±0.01 and 0.66±0.13 (0.95±0.02 and 0.76±0.18, with 5 mm tolerance) were obtained for the segmentation of lungs and COVID-19 lesions, respectively. The system achieved an accuracy of 90% in CT-SS identification on this benchmark dataset.

conclusionWe analysed the impact of using data samples with different annotation criteria in training an AI-based quantification system for pulmonary involvement in COVID-19 pneumonia. In terms of vDSC measures, the U-net segmentation strongly depends on the quality of the lesion annotations. Nevertheless, the CT-SS can be accurately predicted on independent test sets, demonstrating the satisfactory generalization ability of the LungQuant.

Indexed as

Artificial IntelligenceCOVID-19HumansLungSARS-CoV-2ThoraxChest Computed TomographyCOVID-19Ground-glass opacitiesMachine LearningSegmentationU-net

Identifiers

PMID34698988
PMCPMC8547130
OpenAlexW3210363615

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.