Lung nodule CAD software as a second reader: a multicenter study

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this multicenter, multireader study was to evaluate the performance of computed tomography (CT) lung nodule computer-aided detection (CAD) software as a second reader. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The study involved 109 patients from four sites. The data were collected from a variety of multidetector CT scanners and had different scan parameters. Each chest CT scan was divided into four quadrants. A group of three expert thoracic radiologists identified nodules between 4 and 30 mm in maximum diameter within each quadrant. The standard of reference was established by a consensus read of these experienced radiologists. The cases were then interpreted by 10 other radiologist readers with varying degrees of experience, without and then with CAD software. These readers identified nodules and assigned an actionability rating to each quadrant before and after using CAD software. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to measure the performance of the readers without and with CAD software. RESULTS: The average increase in area under the curve for the 10 readers with CAD software was 1.9% for a 95% confidence interval (0.8-8.0%). The area under the curve without CAD software was 86.7% and with CAD software was 88.7%. A nonsignificant correlation was observed between the improvement in sensitivity and experience of the radiologists. The readers also showed a greater improvement in patients with cancer as compared to those without cancer. CONCLUSIONS: In this multicenter trial, CAD software was shown to be effective as a second reader by improving the sensitivity of the radiologists in detecting pulmonary nodules.