Artificial Intelligence for the Interpretation of Coronary Computed Tomography Angiography: Can Machine Learning Improve Diagnostic Performance?

Abstract

Recent development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning system has a potential to improve the clinical diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) provides important information of coronary arteries: i.e., stenosis severity, lesion length, plaque attenuation, and degree of calcium deposition. However, the comprehensive analysis of these factors may be difficult. We analyzed patient characteristics and CCTA findings of 56 patients. We used AI (a random forest) to identify the ischemia-related lesions, and compare the diagnostic performance of a random forest and a logistic regression analysis. By the analysis of a random forest, the area under the curve was increased from 0.89 (a logistic regression analysis) to 0.95 (a random forest). Machine learning models can be helpful for the interpretation of CCTA for detecting ischemia-related coronary lesions.