Semi-automatic volumetry of solid pulmonary nodules improves the interobserver consistency of Lung-RADS score

Abstract:

Objective To study the effect of solid pulmonary nodules volume measurement by 3D-Slicer software on the interobserver consistency of lung CT screening reporting and data system（Lung-RADS） categories.Methods Seventy-six solid nodules from 76 patients were included in this study. The diameter and volume of nodules were obtained by three radiologists using manual and 3D-Slicer software semi-automatic volume measurement methods，respectively，and the raw data was converted to the corresponding Lung-RADS score，of which 2 points was negative and 3 points or above was positive. Intraclass correlation coefficient（ICC） and Bland-Altman index were used to evaluate the interobserver consistency of diameter and volume measurements. Kappa analysis was used to evaluate the interobserver consistency of Lung-RADS score and the intergroup consistency of positive/negative.Results ICC analysis showed that the consistency of manual diameter measurement（0.994-0.996） was significantly lower than that of semi-automatic volume measurement（0.997-0.998），and Bland-Altman index analysis showed that the bias of manual diameter measurement was higher than that of semi-automatic volume measurement. Compared with manual diameter measurement，the use of semi-automatic volume measurement can significantly improve the consistency of Lung-RADS score and positive/negative classifications（0.963-0.975 and 0.957-0.977 vs. 0.833-0.866 and 0.863-0.892）.Conclusion 3D-Slicer semi-automatic volume measurement can improve the interobserver consistency of the size measurement of solid pulmonary nodules， as well as the corresponding Lung-RADS categories.