Deep learning predicts cardiovascular disease risks from lung cancer screening low dose computed tomography

Nat Commun. 2021 May 20;12(1):2963. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23235-4.

Abstract

Cancer patients have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality than the general population. Low dose computed tomography (LDCT) for lung cancer screening offers an opportunity for simultaneous CVD risk estimation in at-risk patients. Our deep learning CVD risk prediction model, trained with 30,286 LDCTs from the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial, achieves an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.871 on a separate test set of 2,085 subjects and identifies patients with high CVD mortality risks (AUC of 0.768). We validate our model against ECG-gated cardiac CT based markers, including coronary artery calcification (CAC) score, CAD-RADS score, and MESA 10-year risk score from an independent dataset of 335 subjects. Our work shows that, in high-risk patients, deep learning can convert LDCT for lung cancer screening into a dual-screening quantitative tool for CVD risk estimation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Validation Study

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Cardiovascular Diseases / diagnosis
  • Cardiovascular Diseases / epidemiology*
  • Cardiovascular Diseases / etiology
  • Clinical Trials as Topic
  • Coronary Vessels / diagnostic imaging
  • Datasets as Topic
  • Deep Learning*
  • Electrocardiography
  • Female
  • Follow-Up Studies
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Lung / diagnostic imaging
  • Lung Neoplasms / complications
  • Lung Neoplasms / diagnosis*
  • Male
  • Mass Screening / methods
  • Mass Screening / statistics & numerical data*
  • Middle Aged
  • ROC Curve
  • Retrospective Studies
  • Risk Assessment / methods
  • Risk Assessment / statistics & numerical data
  • Risk Factors
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed / statistics & numerical data