Predicting COVID-19 malignant progression with AI techniques

Xiang Bai; Cong Fang; Yu Zhou; Song Bai; Zaiyi Liu; Qianlan Chen; Yongchao Xu; Tian Xia; Shi Gong; Xudong Xie; Dejia Song; Ronghui Du; Chunhua Zhou; Chengyang Chen; Dianer Nie; Dandan Tu; Changzheng Zhang; Xiaowu Liu; Lixin Qin; Weiwei Chen

From January 3, 2020 to February 13, 2020, a total of 199 consecutive COVID-19 patients, who were hospitalized at Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital, one of the first two designated hospitals for COVID-19 battle, were enrolled in this retrospective study. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital on February 6, 2020. The informed consent forms were waived investigation. The inclusion criteria were: 1) respiratory rate < 30 breaths per min; 2) resting blood oxygen saturation > 93%; 3) the ratio of arterial oxygen partial pressure to fraction of inspiration oxygen > 300mmHg; 4) non-ICU patients without shock, respiratory failure, mechanical ventilation, and failure of other organs. The clinical and laboratory data at the time point of admission, together with serial chest CT images of all patients were retrospectively analyzed. Based on the presence or absence of the severe/critical progression during the hospitalization, all patients were categorized into two groups. The diagnostic criteria for severe/critical progression were: 1) respiratory rate radiology) independently blinded to the clinical information, and the discrepancy was resolved by consulting another radiologist (WC, 15 years' experience in radiology).