A Dual-Functional System for the Classification and Diameter Measurement of Aortic Dissections Using CTA Volumes via Deep Learning
Zhihui Huang,
Rui Wang,
Hui Yu,
Yifan Xu,
Cheng Cheng,
Guangwei Wang,
Haosen Cao,
Xiang Wei,
Hai-Tao Zhang
Affiliations
Zhihui Huang
School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation & the MOE Engineering Research Center of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems & the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Rui Wang
Division of Cardiovascular Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China
Hui Yu
Wuhan Children’s Hospital: Wuhan Women and Children Medical Care Center, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430010, China
Yifan Xu
School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation & the MOE Engineering Research Center of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems & the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Cheng Cheng
School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation & the MOE Engineering Research Center of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems & the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Guangwei Wang
School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation & the MOE Engineering Research Center of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems & the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Haosen Cao
School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation & the MOE Engineering Research Center of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems & the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Xiang Wei
Division of Cardiovascular Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China; Corresponding authors.
Hai-Tao Zhang
School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation & the MOE Engineering Research Center of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems & the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China; Corresponding authors.
Acute aortic dissection is one of the most life-threatening cardiovascular diseases, with a high mortality rate. Its prevalence ranges from 0.2% to 0.8% in humans, resulting in a significant number of deaths due to being missed in manual examinations. More importantly, the aortic diameter—a critical indicator for surgical selection—significantly influences the outcomes of surgeries post-diagnosis. Therefore, it is an urgent yet challenging mission to develop an automatic aortic dissection diagnostic system that can recognize and classify the aortic dissection type and measure the aortic diameter. This paper offers a dual-functional deep learning system called aortic dissections diagnosis-aiding system (DDAsys) that enables both accurate classification of aortic dissection and precise diameter measurement of the aorta. To this end, we created a dataset containing 61 190 computed tomography angiography (CTA) images from 279 patients from the Division of Cardiovascular Surgery at Tongji Hospital, Wuhan, China. The dataset provides a slice-level summary of difficult-to-identify features, which helps to improve the accuracy of both recognition and classification. Our system achieves a recognition F1 score of 0.984, an average classification F1 score of 0.935, and the respective measurement precisions for ascending and descending aortic diameters are 0.994 mm and 0.767 mm root mean square error (RMSE). The high consistency (88.6%) between the recommended surgical treatments and the actual corresponding surgeries verifies the capability of our system to aid clinicians in developing a more prompt, precise, and consistent treatment strategy.
