A Meta-Analysis of Computerized Tomography-Based Radiomics for the Diagnosis of COVID-19 and Viral Pneumonia

Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) led to a global pandemic. Although reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of viral nucleic acid is the gold standard for COVID-19 diagnosis, its sensitivity was found to not be high enough in many reports. As radiomics-based diagnosis research has recently emerged, we aimed to use computerized tomography (CT)-based radiomics models to differentiate COVID-19 pneumonia from other viral pneumonia infections. Materials and methods: This study was performed according to the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis diagnostic test accuracy studies (PRISMA-DTA) guidelines. The Pubmed, Cochrane, and Embase databases were searched. The pooled sensitivity and pooled specificity were calculated. A summary receiver operating characteristic (sROC) curve was constructed. The study quality was evaluated based on the radiomics quality score. Results: A total of 10,300 patients were involved in this meta-analysis. The radiomics quality score ranged from 13 to 16 (maximum score: 36). The pooled sensitivity was 0.885 (95% CI: 0.818–0.929), and the pooled specificity was 0.811 (95% CI: 0.667–0.902). The pooled AUC was 906. Conclusion: Our meta-analysis showed that CT-based radiomics feature models can successfully differentiate COVID-19 from other viral pneumonias.