Accelerating voxelwise annotation of cross-sectional imaging through AI collaborative labeling with quality assurance and bias mitigation.

Background: precision-medicine quantitative tools for cross-sectional imaging require painstaking labeling of targets that vary considerably in volume, prohibiting scaling of data annotation efforts and supervised training to large datasets for robust and generalizable clinical performance. A straight-forward time-saving strategy involves manual editing of AI-generated labels, which we call AI-collaborative labeling (AICL). Factors affecting the efficacy and utility of such an approach are unknown. Reduction in time effort is not well documented. Further, edited AI labels may be prone to automation bias. Purpose: In this pilot, using a cohort of CTs with intracavitary hemorrhage, we evaluate both time savings and AICL label quality and propose criteria that must be met for using AICL annotations as a high-throughput, high-quality ground truth. Methods: 57 CT scans of patients with traumatic intracavitary hemorrhage were included. No participant recruited for this study had previously interpreted the scans. nnU-net models trained on small existing datasets for each feature (hemothorax/hemoperitoneum/pelvic hematoma; Results: AICL reduced time effort 2.8-fold compared to staff label editing, and 8.7-fold compared to expert labeling (corrected Conclusion: For our use case and annotators, AICL facilitates rapid large-scale curation of high-quality ground truth. The proposed quality control regime can be employed by other investigators prior to embarking on AICL for segmentation tasks in large datasets.