Deep learning to diagnose cardiac amyloidosis from cardiovascular magnetic resonance

• Main Authors: Nicola Martini, Alberto Aimo, Andrea Barison, Daniele Della Latta, Giuseppe Vergaro, Giovanni Donato Aquaro, Andrea Ripoli, Michele Emdin, Dante Chiappino
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2020-12-01
• Series: Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance
• Subjects: Deep learning; Artificial intelligence; Diagnosis; Amyloidosis; Cardiovascular magnetic resonance
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12968-020-00690-4

Abstract Background Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is part of the diagnostic work-up for cardiac amyloidosis (CA). Deep learning (DL) is an application of artificial intelligence that may allow to automatically analyze CMR findings and establish the likelihood of CA. Methods 1.5 T CMR was performed in 206 subjects with suspected CA (n = 100, 49% with unexplained left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy; n = 106, 51% with blood dyscrasia and suspected light-chain amyloidosis). Patients were randomly assigned to the training (n = 134, 65%), validation (n = 30, 15%), and testing subgroups (n = 42, 20%). Short axis, 2-chamber, 4-chamber late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) images were evaluated by 3 networks (DL algorithms). The tags “amyloidosis present” or “absent” were attributed when the average probability of CA from the 3 networks was ≥ 50% or < 50%, respectively. The DL strategy was compared to a machine learning (ML) algorithm considering all manually extracted features (LV volumes, mass and function, LGE pattern, early blood-pool darkening, pericardial and pleural effusion, etc.), to reproduce exam reading by an experienced operator. Results The DL strategy displayed good diagnostic accuracy (88%), with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.982. The precision (positive predictive value), recall score (sensitivity), and F1 score (a measure of test accuracy) were 83%, 95%, and 89% respectively. A ML algorithm considering all CMR features had a similar diagnostic yield to DL strategy (AUC 0.952 vs. 0.982; p = 0.39). Conclusions A DL approach evaluating LGE acquisitions displayed a similar diagnostic performance for CA to a ML-based approach, which simulates CMR reading by experienced operators.