A Simple Method to Train the AI Diagnosis Model of Pulmonary Nodules

BACKGROUND: The differential diagnosis of subcentimetre lung nodules with a diameter of less than 1 cm has always been one of the problems of imaging doctors and thoracic surgeons. We plan to create a deep learning model for the diagnosis of pulmonary nodules in a simple method. METHODS: Image data and pathological diagnosis of patients come from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine from October 1, 2016, to October 1, 2019. After data preprocessing and data augmentation, the training set is used to train the model. The test set is used to evaluate the trained model. At the same time, the clinician will also diagnose the test set. RESULTS: A total of 2,295 images of 496 lung nodules and their corresponding pathological diagnosis were selected as a training set and test set. After data augmentation, the number of training set images reached 12,510 images, including 6,648 malignant nodular images and 5,862 benign nodular images. The area under the P-R curve of the trained model is 0.836 in the classification of malignant and benign nodules. The area under the ROC curve of the trained model is 0.896 (95% CI: 78.96%~100.18%), which is higher than that of three doctors. However, the P value is not less than 0.05. CONCLUSION: With the help of an automatic machine learning system, clinicians can create a deep learning pulmonary nodule pathology classification model without the help of deep learning experts. The diagnostic efficiency of this model is not inferior to that of the clinician.