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Assessment of COPD severity by combining pulmonary function tests and chest CT images

International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by airflow limitations. Physicians frequently assess the stage using pulmonary function tests and chest CT images. This paper describes a novel method to assess COPD severity by combining measurements of pulmonary function tests (PFT) and the results of chest CT image analysis.

Methods The proposed method utilizes measurements from PFTs and chest CT scans to assess COPD severity. This method automatically classifies COPD severity into five stages, described in GOLD guidelines, by a multi-class AdaBoost classifier. The classifier utilizes 24 measurements as feature values, which include 18 measurements from PFTs and six measurements based on chest CT image analysis. A total of 3 normal and 46 abnormal (COPD) examinations performed in adults were evaluated using the proposed method to test its diagnostic capability.

Results The experimental results revealed that its accuracy rates were 100.0 % (resubstitution scheme) and 53.1 % (leave-one-out scheme). A total of 95.7 % of missed classifications were assigned in the neighboring severities.

Conclusions These results demonstrate that the proposed method is a feasible means to assess COPD severity. A much larger sample size will be required to establish the limits of the method and provide clinical validation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by a Grant-In-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education (MEXT) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant Number 21103006 and 22650033.

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Correspondence to Yukitaka Nimura.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

11548_2012_798_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

ESM (PDF 187 kb) Online Supplement 1: Some of axial slices of the chest CT images utilized in the experiments (window level: $-$500 [H.U.], widow width: 1500 [H.U.]).

11548_2012_798_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

ESM (PDF 54 kb) Online Supplement 2: Correlations between the measurements. Cells which have absolute correlation coefficients of 0.7 or higher are painted gray.

11548_2012_798_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

ESM (PDF 49 kb) Online Supplement 3: Correlations between the measurements. Cells which have absolute correlation coefficients of 0.7 or higher are painted gray.

11548_2012_798_MOESM4_ESM.pdf

ESM (PDF 25 kb) Online Supplement 4: The correlation diagrams between the measurements and the COPD severities. The correlation coefficients from (a) to (l) are 0.15, $-$0.44, $-$0.45, $-$0.45, $-$0.67, $-$0.77, 0.45, 0.49, 0.55, 0.08, $-$0.50, and $-$0.49, respectively.

11548_2012_798_MOESM5_ESM.pdf

ESM (PDF 25 kb) Online Supplement 5: The correlation diagrams between the measurements and the COPD severities. The correlation coefficients from (m) to (x) are $-$0.71, 0.37, 0.53, 0.22, $-$0.63, $-$0.73, 0.84, 0.80, 0.52, 0.43, $-$0.10, and 0.20, respectively.

11548_2012_798_MOESM6_ESM.pdf

ESM (PDF 173 kb) Online Supplement 6: Examples of the diaphragms extracted by the proposed method. Subfigures show coronal images (window level: $-$500 [H.U.], widow width: 1500 [H.U.]) and overlaid with extracted diaphragms.

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Nimura, Y., Kitasaka, T., Honma, H. et al. Assessment of COPD severity by combining pulmonary function tests and chest CT images. Int J CARS 8, 353–363 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-012-0798-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-012-0798-y

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