Chest computed tomography for patients with sepsis in the emergency intensive care unit.

Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) caused by infection, which may lead to multiple organ dysfunction in susceptible patient. The most frequently involved organs/systems include the lung, kidney and circulation system. It is well established that sepsis is a risk factor for acute lung injury. While overt pulmonary infiltrates can be well captured by human operators, subtle structural changes of the lung might be ignored. Since the advantage of chest computed tomography (CT) is its capability of providing fine structural changes in high spatial resolution, the study of chest CT by means of computer science may provide further insights into the underlying pathophysiology. The integration of chest CT into the study of sepsis is limited partly due to the lack of well-curated database. The study aims to establish a database comprising detailed clinical tabular data, as well as the raw chest CT images. The database is intended to support a wide array of research studies involving radiomics in sepsis patients, helping to reduce barriers to the reproducibility of clinical research.