Deep Learning for the Classification of Small (≤2 cm) Pulmonary Nodules on CT Imaging: A Preliminary Study

Rationale and Objectives: We aimed to present a deep learning-based malignancy prediction model (CT-lungNET) that is simpler and faster to use in the diagnosis of small (≤2 cm) pulmonary nodules on nonenhanced chest CT and to preliminarily evaluate its performance and usefulness for human reviewers. Materials and Methods: A total of 173 whole nonenhanced chest CT images containing 208 pulmonary nodules (94 malignant and 11 benign nodules) ranging in size from 5 mm to 20 mm were collected. Pathologically confirmed nodules or nodules that remained unchanged for more than 1 year were included, and 30 benign and 30 malignant nodules were randomly assigned into the test set. We designed CT-lungNET to include three convolutional layers followed by two fully-connected layers and compared its diagnostic performance and processing time with those of AlexNET by using the area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC). An observer performance test was conducted involving eight human reviewers of four different groups (medical students, physicians, radiologic residents, and thoracic radiologists) at test 1 and test 2, referring to the CT-lungNET's malignancy prediction rate with pairwise comparison receiver operating curve analysis. Results: CT-lungNET showed an improved AUROC (0.85; 95% confidence interval: 0.74–0.93), compared to that of the AlexNET (0.82; 95% confidence interval: 0.71–0.91). The processing speed per one image slice for CT-lungNET was about 10 times faster than that for AlexNET (0.90 vs. 8.79 seconds). During the observer performance test, the classification performance of nonradiologists was increased with the aid of CTlungNET, (mean AUC improvement: 0.13; range: 0.03–0.19) but not significantly so in the radiologists group (mean AUC improvement: 0.02; range: −0.02 to 0.07). Conclusion: CT-lungNET was able to provide better classification results with a significantly shorter amount of processing time as compared to AlexNET in the diagnosis of small pulmonary nodules on nonenhanced chest CT. In this preliminary observer performance test, CT-lungNET may have a role acting as a second reviewer for less experienced reviewers, resulting in enhanced performance in the diagnosis of early lung cancer.