Computer-assisted detection of acute pulmonary embolism at CT pulmonary angiography in children and young adults: a diagnostic performance analysis:

BackgroundTo diagnose pulmonary embolism (PE) in children and adults since evaluating tiny pulmonary vasculature beyond segmental level is a challenging and demanding task with thousands of images.PurposeTo evaluate the effect of computer-assisted detection (CAD) on acute PE on CTPA in children and young adults by readers with varying experience levels.Material and MethodsSix radiologists were retrospectively divided into three groups according to experience levels and assessed the CTPA studies on a per-emboli basis. All readers identified independently the PE presence, and ranked diagnostic confidence on a 5-point scale with and without CAD. Reading time, sensitivities, specificities, accuracies, positive predictive values (PPVs), and negative predictive values (NPVs) were calculated for each reading.ResultsThe sensitivities and NPVs differed significantly in most readers (P = 0.004, 0.001, 0.010, 0.010, and 0.012 for sensitivities and P = 0.011, 0.003, 0.016, 0.017, and 0.019 for NPVs) except for reader...