COVID-19 disease: CT Pneumonia Analysis prototype by using artificial intelligence, predicting the disease severity

BACKGROUND: Since the beginning of 2020, coronavirus disease has spread widely all over the world and this required rapid adequate management; therefore, continuous searching for rapid and sensitive CT chest techniques was needed to give a hand for the clinician. We aimed to assess the validity of computed tomography (CT) quantitative and qualitative analysis in COVID-19 pneumonia and how it can predict the disease severity on admission. RESULTS: One hundred and twenty patients were enrolled in our study, 98 (81.7%) of them were males, and 22 (18.3%) of them were females with a mean age of 52.63 ± 12.79 years old, ranging from 28 to 83 years. Groups B and C showed significantly increased number of involved lung segments and lobes, frequencies of consolidation, crazy-paving pattern, and air bronchogram. The total lung severity score and the total score for crazy-paving and consolidation are used as severity indicators in the qualitative method and could differentiate between groups B and C and group A (90.9% sensitivity, 87.5% specificity, and 93.2% sensitivity, 87.5% specificity, respectively), while the quantitative indicators could differentiate these three groups. Using the quantitative CT indicators, the validity to differentiate different groups showed 84.1% sensitivity and 81.2% specificity for the opacity score, and 90.9% sensitivity and 81.2% specificity for the percentage of high opacity. CONCLUSION: Advances in CT COVID-19 pneumonia assessment provide an accurate and rapid tool for severity assessment, helping for decision-making notably for the critical cases.