AI assistance improved radiologists' performance in distinguishing COVID-19 from pneumonia of other etiology on chest CT. Key Results: An AI model had higher test accuracy (96% vs 85%, p<0.001), sensitivity (95% vs 79%, p<0.001), and specificity (96% vs 88%, p=0.002) than radiologists. In an independent test set, our AI model achieved an accuracy of 87%, sensitivity of 89% and specificity of 86%. With AI assistance, the radiologists achieved a higher average accuracy (90% vs 85%, p<0.001), sensitivity (88% vs 79%, p<0.001) and specificity (91% vs 88%, p=0.001). AbstractBackground: COVID-19 and pneumonia of other etiology share similar CT characteristics, contributing to the challenges in differentiating them with high accuracy.Purpose: To establish and evaluate an artificial intelligence (AI) system in differentiating COVID-19 and other pneumonia on chest CT and assess radiologist performance without and with AI assistance.Methods: 521 patients with positive RT-PCR for COVID-19 and abnormal chest CT findings were retrospectively identified from ten hospitals from January 2020 to April 2020. 665 patients with non-COVID-19 pneumonia and definite evidence of pneumonia on chest CT were retrospectively selected from three hospitals between 2017 and 2019. To classify COVID-19 versus other pneumonia for each patient, abnormal CT slices were input into the EfficientNet B4 deep neural network architecture after lung segmentation, followed by two-layer fully-connected neural network to pool slices together.Our final cohort of 1,186 patients (132,583 CT slices) was divided into training, validation and test sets in a 7:2:1 and equal ratio. Independent testing was performed by evaluating model performance on separate hospitals. Studies were blindly reviewed by six radiologists without and then with AI assistance.Results: Our final model achieved a test accuracy of 96% (95% CI: 90-98%), sensitivity 95% (95% CI: 83-100%) and specificity of 96% (95% CI: 88-99%) with Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) AUC of 0.95 and Precision-Recall (PR) AUC of 0.90. On independent testing, our model achieved an accuracy of 87% (95% CI: 82-90%), sensitivity of 89% (95% CI: 81-94%) and specificity of 86% (95% CI: 80-90%) with ROC AUC of 0.90 and PR AUC of 0.87. Assisted by the models' probabilities, the radiologists achieved a higher average test accuracy (90% vs. 85%, ∆=5, p<0.001), sensitivity (88% vs. 79%, ∆=9, p<0.001) and specificity (91% vs. 88%, ∆=3, p=0.001).

Objectives Early recognition of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity can guide patient management. However, it is challenging to predict when COVID-19 patients will progress to critical illness. This study aimed to develop an artificial intelligence system to predict future deterioration to critical illness in COVID-19 patients. Methods An artificial intelligence (AI) system in a time-to-event analysis framework was developed to integrate chest CT and clinical data for risk prediction of future deterioration to critical illness in patients with COVID-19. Results A multi-institutional international cohort of 1,051 patients with RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 and chest CT was included in this study. Of them, 282 patients developed critical illness, which was defined as requiring ICU admission and/or mechanical ventilation and/or reaching death during their hospital stay. The AI system achieved a C-index of 0.80 for predicting individual COVID-19 patients’ to critical illness. The AI system successfully stratified the patients into high-risk and low-risk groups with distinct progression risks ( p < 0.0001). Conclusions Using CT imaging and clinical data, the AI system successfully predicted time to critical illness for individual patients and identified patients with high risk. AI has the potential to accurately triage patients and facilitate personalized treatment. Key Point • AI system can predict time to critical illness for patients with COVID-19 by using CT imaging and clinical data. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00330-021-08049-8.

Background About 10–20% of patients with Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection progressed to severe illness within a week or so after initially diagnosed as mild infection. Identification of this subgroup of patients was crucial for early aggressive intervention to improve survival. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether computer tomography (CT) - derived measurements of body composition such as myosteatosis indicating fat deposition inside the muscles could be used to predict the risk of transition to severe illness in patients with initial diagnosis of mild COVID-19 infection. Methods Patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection presenting initially as having the mild common-subtype illness were retrospectively recruited between January 21, 2020 and February 19, 2020. CT-derived body composition measurements were obtained from the initial chest CT images at the level of the twelfth thoracic vertebra (T12) and were used to build models to predict the risk of transition. A myosteatosis nomogram was constructed using multivariate logistic regression incorporating both clinical variables and myosteatosis measurements. The performance of the prediction models was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve including the area under the curve (AUC). The performance of the nomogram was evaluated by discrimination, calibration curve, and decision curve. Results A total of 234 patients were included in this study. Thirty-one of the enrolled patients transitioned to severe illness. Myosteatosis measurements including SM-RA (skeletal muscle radiation attenuation) and SMFI (skeletal muscle fat index) score fitted with SMFI, age and gender, were significantly associated with risk of transition for both the training and validation cohorts (P < 0.01). The nomogram combining the SM-RA, SMFI score and clinical model improved prediction for the transition risk with an AUC of 0.85 [95% CI, 0.75 to 0.95] for the training cohort and 0.84 [95% CI, 0.71 to 0.97] for the validation cohort, as compared to the nomogram of the clinical model with AUC of 0.75 and 0.74 for the training and validation cohorts respectively. Favorable clinical utility was observed using decision curve analysis. Conclusion We found CT-derived measurements of thoracic myosteatosis to be associated with higher risk of transition to severe illness in patients affected by COVID-19 who presented initially as having the mild common-subtype infection. Our study showed the relevance of skeletal muscle examination in the overall assessment of disease progression and prognosis of patients with COVID-19 infection.

The existence of the neural control of mast cell functions has long been proposed. Mast cells (MCs) are localized in association with the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the brain, where they are closely aligned, anatomically and functionally, with neurons and neuronal processes throughout the body. They express receptors for and are regulated by various neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and other neuromodulators. Consequently, modulation provided by these neurotransmitters and neuromodulators allows neural control of MC functions and involvement in the pathogenesis of mast cell–related disease states. Recently, the roles of individual neurotransmitters and neuropeptides in regulating mast cell actions have been investigated extensively. This review offers a systematic review of recent advances in our understanding of the contributions of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides to mast cell activation and the pathological implications of this regulation on mast cell–related disease states, though the full extent to which such control influences health and disease is still unclear, and a complete understanding of the mechanisms underlying the control is lacking. Future validation of animal and in vitro models also is needed, which incorporates the integration of microenvironment-specific influences and the complex, multifaceted cross-talk between mast cells and various neural signals. Moreover, new biological agents directed against neurotransmitter receptors on mast cells that can be used for therapeutic intervention need to be more specific, which will reduce their ability to support inflammatory responses and enhance their potential roles in protecting against mast cell–related pathogenesis.

share equal contribution in this article and should have been listed as Harrison X. Bai*, Robin Wang*, with the asterisks indicating equal contribution.