Imagerie de la pneumonie COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health crisis. Given the long turnaround of RT-PCR, the gold standard diagnostic technique, chest CT plays a pivotal role in the triage of patients presenting at the emergency department, allowing them to be hospitalized in “COVID” or “non-COVID” units. Baseline CT scan must be performed without contrast, but injection is necessary in case of suspected pulmonary embolism, which could be quite frequent in this disease. The typical CT appearance of COVID-19 pneumonia consists of bilateral, peripheral, posterior and basal ground-glass opacities. CT extent of pulmonary lesions correlates with clinical disease severity and should be mentioned in the radiologic report. Given the considerable number of chest CT scans performed during this epidemic, it is important to be aware of the differential diagnosis of acute dyspnea. AI techniques could allow for reliable automated diagnosis and quantification of disease extent.