Estimating Total Lung Volume from Pixel-Level Thickness Maps of Chest Radiographs Using Deep Learning.

Journal: Radiology. Artificial intelligence
Published Date: May 28, 2025

Abstract

Purpose To estimate the total lung volume (TLV) from real and synthetic frontal chest radiographs (CXR) on a pixel level using lung thickness maps generated by a U-Net deep learning model. Materials and Methods This retrospective study included 5,959 chest CT scans from two public datasets: the lung nodule analysis 2016 ( = 656) and the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) pulmonary embolism detection challenge 2020 ( = 5,303). Additionally, 72 participants were selected from the Klinikum Rechts der Isar dataset (October 2018 to December 2019), each with a corresponding chest radiograph taken within seven days. Synthetic radiographs and lung thickness maps were generated using forward projection of CT scans and their lung segmentations. A U-Net model was trained on synthetic radiographs to predict lung thickness maps and estimate TLV. Model performance was assessed using mean squared error (MSE), Pearson correlation coefficient , and two-sided Student's t-distribution. Results The study included 72 participants (45 male, 27 female, 33 healthy: mean age 62 years [range 34-80]; 39 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: mean age 69 years [range 47-91]). TLV predictions showed low error rates (MSEPublic-Synthetic = 0.16 L, MSEKRI-Synthetic = 0.20 L, MSEKRI-Real = 0.35 L) and strong correlations with CT-derived reference standard TLV (nPublic-Synthetic = 1,191, r = 0.99, < .001; nKRI-Synthetic = 72, r = 0.97, < .001; nKRI-Real = 72, r = 0.91, < .001). When evaluated on different datasets, the U-Net model achieved the highest performance for TLV estimation on the Luna16 test dataset, with the lowest mean squared error (MSE = 0.09 L) and strongest correlation ( = 0.99, <.001) compared with CT-derived TLV. Conclusion The U-Net-generated pixel-level lung thickness maps successfully estimated TLV for both synthetic and real radiographs. ©RSNA, 2025.

Authors

  • Tina Dorosti
    From the Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences (J.T., M.S., T.D., F.P., D.P., F.S.), Munich Institute of Biomedical Engineering (J.T., M.S., T.D., T.L., F.P., D.P., F.S.), Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, School of Medicine, Klinikum rechts der Isar (J.T., M.S., T.D., F.P., D.P.), Institute for Advanced Study (J.T., F.P., D.P.), and Computational Imaging and Inverse Problems, Department of Computer Science, School of Computation, Information, and Technology (T.L.), Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 11, 85748 Garching, Germany.
  • Manuel Schultheiß
  • Philipp Schmette
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics and Munich School of BioEngineering, Technical University of Munich, 85748, Garching, Germany.
  • Jule Heuchert
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 11, 85748 Garching, Germany.
  • Johannes Thalhammer
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany.
  • Florian T Gassert
    Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, School of Medicine and Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, 81675, Munich, Germany.
  • Thorsten Sellerer
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 11, 85748 Garching, Germany.
  • Rafael Schick
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 11, 85748 Garching, Germany.
  • Kirsten Taphorn
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 11, 85748 Garching, Germany.
  • Korbinian Mechlem
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 11, 85748 Garching, Germany.
  • Lorenz Birnbacher
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 11, 85748 Garching, Germany.
  • Florian Schaff
    Chair of Biomedical Physics, Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany.
  • Franz Pfeiffer
    Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, School of Medicine & Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, München, Germany.
  • Daniela Pfeiffer
    Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Technische Universität München, Munich, 81675, Germany.

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