As part of the International Lung Cancer Screening Project, Dr. Stephen Lam and colleagues from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver assessed the effectiveness of using CAD for detecting lung nodules in 148 smokers.
They employed a "CAD+Tech" protocol to catch lung nodules using CAD, followed by a review by a radiologic technician who either accepted or rejected each of the findings. Afterward, a radiologist conducted a final review.
The researchers found that using CAD to look for lung nodules consistently led to statistically significant reductions in reading time when at least one nodule was present, compared with a more standard radiologist-first reading. CAD also spotted nodules in a number of cases in which a radiologist did not initially detect any nodules.
"While CAD+Tech cannot replace the radiologist, CAD could play an important role in lung cancer screening by saving radiologists time and, importantly, reducing their false-negative rate," presenter Dr. Ren Yuan, PhD, told AuntMinnie.com.
Furthermore, clinicians have the option of integrating CAD with a nodule malignancy risk probability calculation tool, which could aid the downstream management of any screen-detected lung nodules, she said.
