Imaging features and mechanisms of novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19): Study Protocol Clinical Trial (SPIRIT Compliant)

INTRODUCTION: A novel coronavirus, tentatively designated as 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, emerged in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019 and which continues to expand. On February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) named the disease coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). On February 28, WHO increased our assessment of the risk of spread and the risk of impact of COVID-19 to very high at a global level. The COVID-19 poses significant threats to international health. Computed tomography (CT) has been an important imaging modality in assisting in the diagnosis and management of patients withCOVID-19. Some retrospective imaging studies have reported chest CT findings of COVID-19 in the past 2 months, suggesting that several CT findings may be characteristic. To our knowledge, there has been no prospective multicentre imaging study of COVID-19 to date. We proposed a hypothesis: There are some specific CT features on Chest CT of COVID-19 patients. And the mechanism of these CT features is explicable based on pathological findings. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the specific CT features of COVID-19 and the formation mechanism of these CT features. METHOD: This study is a prospective multicenter observational study. We will recruit 100 patients with COVID-19 at 55 hospitals. All patients undergo chest CT examination with the same scan protocol. The distribution and morphology of lesions on chest CT, clinical data will be recorded. A number of patients will be pathologically examined after permission is granted. The data of these three aspects will be analyzed synthetically. DISCUSSION: This study will help us to identify the chest CT features of COVID-19 and its mechanism. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This retrospective study was approved by the Biomedical Research Ethics Committee of West China Hospital of Sichuan University (No. 2020–140). Written informed consent will be obtained from all study participants prior to enrollment in the study. To protect privacy of participants, all private information were kept anonymous. The results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and will be disseminated electronically and in print regardless of results.