A Deep Residual U-Net Algorithm for Automatic Detection and Quantification of Ascites on Abdominopelvic Computed Tomography Images Acquired in the Emergency Department: Model Development and Validation

Background: Detection and quantification of intra-abdominal free fluid (ie, ascites) on computed tomography (CT) images are essential processes for finding emergent or urgent conditions in patients. In an emergency department, automatic detection and quantification of ascites will be beneficial. Objective: We aimed to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for the automatic detection and quantification of ascites simultaneously using a single deep learning model (DLM). Methods: We developed 2D DLMs based on deep residual U-Net, U-Net, bidirectional U-Net, and recurrent residual U-Net (R2U-Net) algorithms to segment areas of ascites on abdominopelvic CT images. Based on segmentation results, the DLMs detected ascites by classifying CT images into ascites images and nonascites images. The AI algorithms were trained using 6337 CT images from 160 subjects (80 with ascites and 80 without ascites) and tested using 1635 CT images from 40 subjects (20 with ascites and 20 without ascites). The performance of the AI algorithms was evaluated for diagnostic accuracy of ascites detection and for segmentation accuracy of ascites areas. Of these DLMs, we proposed an AI algorithm with the best performance. Results: The segmentation accuracy was the highest for the deep residual U-Net model with a mean intersection over union (mIoU) value of 0.87, followed by U-Net, bidirectional U-Net, and R2U-Net models (mIoU values of 0.80, 0.77, and 0.67, respectively). The detection accuracy was the highest for the deep residual U-Net model (0.96), followed by U-Net, bidirectional U-Net, and R2U-Net models (0.90, 0.88, and 0.82, respectively). The deep residual U-Net model also achieved high sensitivity (0.96) and high specificity (0.96). Conclusions: We propose a deep residual U-Net-based AI algorithm for automatic detection and quantification of ascites on abdominopelvic CT scans, which provides excellent performance.

Automated summary

In this study, an AI algorithm based on deep learning was developed to automatically detect and quantify ascites. The algorithm segmented abdominopelvic CT images and detected ascites by classifying images. The algorithm achieved high accuracy in both detection and segmentation, providing excellent performance for ascites detection and quantification.