New clinical research into the impact of our AI solution in routine clinical practice has been published today in the European Journal of Radiology Open. The study with two radiologists shows that reporting pulmonary nodules on CT using Veye Lung Nodules reduces reading time by an average of ~ 40%. It also indicates a striking improvement in agreement when aided by Veye.
The retrospective study was performed at Spaarne Gasthuis, a large teaching hospital in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands. Two radiologists independently assessed 50 chest CT scans for incidental pulmonary nodules twice, with six months in between sessions.
Their readings were first unaided, then assisted by Veye Lung Nodules, our AI solution that automatically detects, measures, classifies, and tracks the growth of pulmonary nodules.
Reading time
Both radiologists read the CTs significantly faster with Veye, namely by 33.4% and 42.6%. Overall, the radiologists reported fewer nodules when using the AI system. Yet even when an equal number of nodules were reported, the time-saving persisted.
The volumetric measurements provided by Veye Lung Nodules, which include growth percentage and volume doubling time from the most recent prior, also contributed to the reduction.
Interobserver agreement
The radiologists concluded each review with a patient management recommendation based on the British Thoracic Society (BTS) guidelines. A consensus session was held to establish a golden standard.
The study showed a notably higher agreement between the two readers when supported by Veye, going from linear weighted kappa of 0.61 to 0.84. The agreement between each reader and the consensus was also higher. The findings are summarised in Table 2 in the publication:
The AI-based measurements (diameter and volume), volume doubling times, and composition may have mitigated some of the largest sources of reader disagreements.
Conclusions
The study suggests that Veye Lung Nodules could contribute to more uniform patient management recommendations. These would “allow for more robust and effective triaging in clinical practice and lung cancer screening programmes”, the authors wrote.
Due to the experimental setting, it is challenging to extrapolate the time reduction benefits to clinical practice. The decrease in reporting time is, nonetheless, consistent with other published and anecdotal evidence from radiologists using Veye.
