Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia and immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy-related pneumonitis share common features. The aim of this study was to determine on chest computed tomography (CT) images whether a deep convolutional neural network algorithm is able to solve the challenge of differential diagnosis between COVID-19 pneumonia and ICI therapy-related pneumonitis.
Methods: We enrolled three groups: a pneumonia-free group (n = 30), a COVID-19 group (n = 34), and a group of patients with ICI therapy-related pneumonitis (n = 21). Computed tomography images were analyzed with an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm based on a deep convolutional neural network structure. Statistical analysis included the Mann-Whitney U test (significance threshold at p < 0.05) and the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve).
Results: The algorithm showed low specificity in distinguishing COVID-19 from ICI therapy-related pneumonitis (sensitivity 97.1%, specificity 14.3%, area under the curve (AUC) = 0.62). ICI therapy-related pneumonitis was identified by the AI when compared to pneumonia-free controls (sensitivity = 85.7%, specificity 100%, AUC = 0.97).
Conclusions: The deep learning algorithm is not able to distinguish between COVID-19 pneumonia and ICI therapy-related pneumonitis. Awareness must be increased among clinicians about imaging similarities between COVID-19 and ICI therapy-related pneumonitis. ICI therapy-related pneumonitis can be applied as a challenge population for cross-validation to test the robustness of AI models used to analyze interstitial pneumonias of variable etiology.
Keywords: COVID-19; artificial intelligence; chest CT; deep learning; drug-induced pneumonitis; immune checkpoint inhibitors therapy.