Lung ultrasound and procalcitonin, improving antibiotic management and avoiding radiation exposure in pediatric critical patients with bacterial pneumonia: a randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Pneumonia is a major public health problem with an impact on morbidity and mortality. Its management still represents a challenge. The aim was to determine whether a new diagnostic algorithm combining lung ultrasound (LUS) and procalcitonin (PCT) improved pneumonia management regarding antibiotic use, radiation exposure, and associated costs, in critically ill pediatric patients with suspected bacterial pneumonia (BP). METHODS: Randomized, blinded, comparative effectiveness clinical trial. Children < 18y with suspected BP admitted to the PICU from September 2017 to December 2019, were included. PCT was determined at admission. Patients were randomized into the experimental group (EG) and control group (CG) if LUS or chest X-ray (CXR) were done as the first image test, respectively. Patients were classified: 1.LUS/CXR not suggestive of BP and PCT < 1 ng/mL, no antibiotics were recommended; 2.LUS/CXR suggestive of BP, regardless of the PCT value, antibiotics were recommended; 3.LUS/CXR not suggestive of BP and PCT > 1 ng/mL, antibiotics were recommended. RESULTS: 194 children were enrolled, 113 (58.2%) females, median age of 134 (IQR 39-554) days. 96 randomized into EG and 98 into CG. 1. In 75/194 patients the image test was not suggestive of BP with PCT < 1 ng/ml; 29/52 in the EG and 11/23 in the CG did not receive antibiotics. 2. In 101 patients, the image was suggestive of BP; 34/34 in the EG and 57/67 in the CG received antibiotics. Statistically significant differences between groups were observed when PCT resulted < 1 ng/ml (p = 0.01). 3. In 18 patients the image test was not suggestive of BP but PCT resulted > 1 ng/ml, all of them received antibiotics. A total of 0.035 mSv radiation/patient was eluded. A reduction of 77% CXR/patient was observed. LUS did not significantly increase costs. CONCLUSIONS: Combination of LUS and PCT showed no risk of mistreating BP, avoided radiation and did not increase costs. The algorithm could be a reliable tool for improving pneumonia management. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT04217980.

[The diagnostic value of lung ultrasound in children with community-acquired pneumonia].

Objective: To investigate the diagnostic value of lung ultrasound in hospitalized children with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Methods: In the cross-sectional study, a total of 422 children with CAP who were hospitalized in the Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, from February 2021 to August 2022 and completed lung ultrasound examination within 48 hours after admission were enrolled. The clinical characteristics, lung ultrasound and chest CT were collected. The patients were divided into two groups according to the signs of pneumonia indicated by chest CT, and the signs of lung ultrasound with diagnostic value were screened according to the signs of pneumonia indicated by chest CT by least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) regression. According to severity of the disease, the children were divided into the severe group and the mild group, and the differences of lung ultrasound signs between the two groups were compared. Kruskal-Wallis test, Fisher's exact test was selected for comparison between groups. Random forest classifier wes used to evaluate the value of lung ultrasound in the diagnosis of CAP and prediction of severe pneumonia in children. The receiver operating characteristic curve was used to evaluate the prediction effect. Use DeLong test to compare the area under the curve. Results: Among the 422 cases of CAP, there were 258 males and 164 females, and the age of onset was 2.8 (1.3, 4.3) years. The confluent B-line, consolidation and pleural effusion detected by lung ultrasound were 309 cases (73.2%), 232 cases (55.0%) and 16 cases (3.8%), respectively, and the size of consolidation was 3.0 (0, 11.0) mm. One hundred and ten children (26.1%) with CAP completed chest CT. There were 90 cases with signs of pneumonia in chest CT and 20 cases without signs of pneumonia. Lasso was used for feature selection.Lung consolidation (OR=2.46), bilateral lung consolidation (OR=1.16) and confluent B-line (OR=1.34) were the main index. With random forest classifier, the accuracy of models using full variables and Lasso-selected variables were 0.79 (95%CI 0.70-0.86) and 0.79 (95%CI 0.70-0.86), the sensitivity were 0.81 and 0.81, and the specificity were 0.75 and 0.70, and the area under curve were 0.87 (95%CI 0.81-0.94, P<0.001) and 0.84 (95%CI 0.76-0.91, P<0.001), respectively. There were 97 cases in severe group and 325 cases in mild group. Compared with the mild group, the detection rate of consolidation, multiple consolidation, the size of consolidation and the size of consolidation was adjusted by body surface area (consolidation size/body surface area) in severe group were higher (66 cases (68.0%) vs. 166 cases (51.1%), 42 cases (43.3%) vs. 93 cases (28.6%), 8.0 (0, 17.0) vs. 1.0 (0, 9.0) mm, 12.5 (0, 24.6) vs. 2.1 (0, 17.6), χ2=8.59, 9.98, Z=14.40, 12.79, all P<0.05). Using lung ultrasound lung consolidation size and consolidation size/body surface area to predict the severe CAP, the optimal cut-off value were 6.7 mm and 10.2, the accuracy was 0.80 (95%CI 0.75-0.83) and 0.89 (95%CI 0.86-0.92), the sensitivity was 0.99 and 0.99, the specificity was 0.14 and 0.56, respectively, and the area under the curve was 0.66 (95%CI 0.60-0.72, P<0.001) and 0.76 (95%CI 0.70-0.83, P<0.001), respectively. The area under the curve of consolidation size/body surface area was higher than that of consolidation size (Z=5.50, P<0.001). Conclusions: Consolidation and confluent B-line, are important index for lung ultrasound diagnosis of CAP in children. The actual consolidation size adjusted by body surface area is superior to the size of consolidation in predicting severe CAP.

Enhancing pediatric pneumonia diagnosis through masked autoencoders.

Pneumonia, an inflammatory lung condition primarily triggered by bacteria, viruses, or fungi, presents distinctive challenges in pediatric cases due to the unique characteristics of the respiratory system and the potential for rapid deterioration. Timely diagnosis is crucial, particularly in children under 5, who have immature immune systems, making them more susceptible to pneumonia. While chest X-rays are indispensable for diagnosis, challenges arise from subtle radiographic findings, varied clinical presentations, and the subjectivity of interpretations, especially in pediatric cases. Deep learning, particularly transfer learning, has shown promise in improving pneumonia diagnosis by leveraging large labeled datasets. However, the scarcity of labeled data for pediatric chest X-rays presents a hurdle in effective model training. To address this challenge, we explore the potential of self-supervised learning, focusing on the Masked Autoencoder (MAE). By pretraining the MAE model on adult chest X-ray images and fine-tuning the pretrained model on a pediatric pneumonia chest X-ray dataset, we aim to overcome data scarcity issues and enhance diagnostic accuracy for pediatric pneumonia. The proposed approach demonstrated competitive performance an AUC of 0.996 and an accuracy of 95.89% in distinguishing between normal and pneumonia. Additionally, the approach exhibited high AUC values (normal: 0.997, bacterial pneumonia: 0.983, viral pneumonia: 0.956) and an accuracy of 93.86% in classifying normal, bacterial pneumonia, and viral pneumonia. This study also investigated the impact of different masking ratios during pretraining and explored the labeled data efficiency of the MAE model, presenting enhanced diagnostic capabilities for pediatric pneumonia.

Radiographic findings of adenoviral pneumonia in children.

OBJECTIVE: Adenovirus pneumonia is a common cause of community-acquired pneumonia in children and can mimic bacterial pneumonia, but there are few publications on its radiographic features. This study has evaluated the chest radiography findings of community-acquired adenovirus pneumonia in children. The frequency of radiological findings mimicking bacterial pneumonia was investigated. The clinical features of patients with adenovirus pneumonia possessing radiological findings mimicking bacterial pneumonia were also evaluated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The chest radiographs of patients diagnosed with adenovirus pneumonia were retrospectively reviewed. The chest radiographs were interpreted independently by a pediatric infectious disease specialist and a pediatric radiologist. Chest radiography findings mimicking bacterial pneumonia (bacterial-like) were specified as consolidation +/- pleural effusion. Other findings on chest radiography or a completely normal chest X-ray were specified as findings that were compatible with "typical viral pneumonia". RESULTS: A total of 1407 patients were positive for adenovirus with respiratory multiplex PCR. The 219 patients who met the study criteria were included in the study. Chest radiographs were normal in 58 (26.5 %) patients. The chest radiograph findings mimicked bacterial pneumonia in 41 (18.7 %) patients. CONCLUSION: Adenovirus pneumonia occurs predominantly in children aged five years and younger, as with other viral pneumonias. The radiographic findings in adenovirus pneumonia are predominantly those seen in viral pneumonia. Increasing age and positivity for only adenovirus without other viruses on respiratory multiplex PCR were associated with the chest radiograph being more likely to be "bacterial-like". Adenovirus may lead to lobar/segmental consolidation at a rate that is not very rare.

Validating the accuracy of deep learning for the diagnosis of pneumonia on chest x-ray against a robust multimodal reference diagnosis: a post hoc analysis of two prospective studies.

BACKGROUND: Artificial intelligence (AI) seems promising in diagnosing pneumonia on chest x-rays (CXR), but deep learning (DL) algorithms have primarily been compared with radiologists, whose diagnosis can be not completely accurate. Therefore, we evaluated the accuracy of DL in diagnosing pneumonia on CXR using a more robust reference diagnosis. METHODS: We trained a DL convolutional neural network model to diagnose pneumonia and evaluated its accuracy in two prospective pneumonia cohorts including 430 patients, for whom the reference diagnosis was determined a posteriori by a multidisciplinary expert panel using multimodal data. The performance of the DL model was compared with that of senior radiologists and emergency physicians reviewing CXRs and that of radiologists reviewing computed tomography (CT) performed concomitantly. RESULTS: Radiologists and DL showed a similar accuracy on CXR for both cohorts (p ≥ 0.269): cohort 1, radiologist 1 75.5% (95% confidence interval 69.1-80.9), radiologist 2 71.0% (64.4-76.8), DL 71.0% (64.4-76.8); cohort 2, radiologist 70.9% (64.7-76.4), DL 72.6% (66.5-78.0). The accuracy of radiologists and DL was significantly higher (p ≤ 0.022) than that of emergency physicians (cohort 1 64.0% [57.1-70.3], cohort 2 63.0% [55.6-69.0]). Accuracy was significantly higher for CT (cohort 1 79.0% [72.8-84.1], cohort 2 89.6% [84.9-92.9]) than for CXR readers including radiologists, clinicians, and DL (all p-values < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: When compared with a robust reference diagnosis, the performance of AI models to identify pneumonia on CXRs was inferior than previously reported but similar to that of radiologists and better than that of emergency physicians. RELEVANCE STATEMENT: The clinical relevance of AI models for pneumonia diagnosis may have been overestimated. AI models should be benchmarked against robust reference multimodal diagnosis to avoid overestimating its performance. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02467192 , and NCT01574066 . KEY POINT: • We evaluated an openly-access convolutional neural network (CNN) model to diagnose pneumonia on CXRs. • CNN was validated against a strong multimodal reference diagnosis. • In our study, the CNN performance (area under the receiver operating characteristics curve 0.74) was lower than that previously reported when validated against radiologists' diagnosis (0.99 in a recent meta-analysis). • The CNN performance was significantly higher than emergency physicians' (p ≤ 0.022) and comparable to that of board-certified radiologists (p ≥ 0.269).

A Novel Approach to the Technique of Lung Region Segmentation Based on a Deep Learning Model to Diagnose COVID-19 X-ray Images.

BACKGROUND: The novel coronavirus pandemic has caused a global health crisis, placing immense strain on healthcare systems worldwide. Chest X-ray technology has emerged as a critical tool for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. However, the manual interpretation of chest X-ray films has proven to be inefficient and time-consuming, necessitating the development of an automated classification system. OBJECTIVE: In response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we aimed to develop a deep learning model that accurately classifies chest X-ray images, specifically focusing on lung regions, to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of COVID-19 and pneumonia diagnosis. METHODS: We have proposed a novel deep network called "FocusNet" for precise segmentation of lung regions in chest radiographs. This segmentation allows for the accurate extraction of lung contours from chest X-ray images, which are then input into the classification network, ResNet18. By training the model on these segmented lung datasets, we sought to improve the accuracy of classification. RESULTS: The performance of our proposed system was evaluated on three types of lung regions in normal individuals, COVID-19 patients, and those with pneumonia. The average accuracy of the segmentation model (FocusNet) in segmenting lung regions was found to be above 90%. After reclassification of the segmented lung images, the specificities and sensitivities for normal, COVID-19, and pneumonia were excellent, with values of 98.00%, 99.00%, 99.50%, and 98.50%, 100.00%, and 99.00%, respectively. ResNet18 achieved impressive area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.99, 1.00, and 0.99 for classifying normal, COVID-19, and pneumonia, respectively, on the segmented lung datasets. Moreover, the AUC values of the three groups increased by 0.02, 0.02, and 0.06, respectively, when compared to the direct classification of unsegmented original images. Overall, the accuracy of lung region classification after processing the datasets was 99.3%. CONCLUSION: Our deep learning-based automated chest X-ray classification system, incorporating lung region segmentation using FocusNet and subsequent classification with ResNet18, has significantly improved the accuracy of diagnosing respiratory lung diseases, including COVID-19. The proposed approach has great potential to revolutionize the diagnosis of COVID-19 and other respiratory lung diseases, offering a valuable tool to support healthcare professionals during health crises.

Accuracy and inter-rater agreement among practitioners using quick thoracic ultrasonography to diagnose calf pneumonia.

BACKGROUND: Thoracic ultrasonography (TUS) is a commonly used tool for on-farm detection of pneumonia in calves. Different scanning methods have been described, but the performance of novice practitioners after training has not been documented. METHODS: In this study, 38 practitioners performed quick TUS (qTUS) on 18-23 calves each. Pneumonia was defined as lung consolidation 1 cm or more in depth. Diagnostic parameters (accuracy [Acc], sensitivity [Se] and specificity [Sp]) were compared to those of an experienced operator. Cohen's kappa and Krippendorff's alpha (Kalpha) were determined. The potential effects of training and exam sessions on performance were evaluated. RESULTS: The average relative Se and Sp were 0.66 (standard deviation [SD] = 0.26; minimum [Min.]-Maximum [Max.] = 0-1) and 0.71 (SD = 0.19; Min.-Max. = 0.25-1), respectively. The average relative Acc was 0.73 (SD = 0.11; Min.-Max. = 0.52-0.96). Over all sessions, Cohen's kappa averaged 0.40 (SD = 0.24; Min.-Max. = 0.014-0.90) and Kalpha was 0.24 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.20-0.27), indicating 'fair' agreement. Calf age and housing influenced Se and Sp. Supervised practical training improved Se by 17.5% (95% CI: 0.01-0.34). LIMITATIONS: The separate effects of calf age and housing could not be determined. CONCLUSION: This study showed that qTUS, like any other clinical skill, has a learning curve, and variability in performance can be substantial. Adequate training and certification of one's skill are recommended to assure good diagnostic accuracy.

Pneumonia detection based on RSNA dataset and anchor-free deep learning detector.

Pneumonia is a highly lethal disease, and research on its treatment and early screening tools has received extensive attention from researchers. Due to the maturity and cost reduction of chest X-ray technology, and with the development of artificial intelligence technology, pneumonia identification based on deep learning and chest X-ray has attracted attention from all over the world. Although the feature extraction capability of deep learning is strong, existing deep learning object detection frameworks are based on pre-defined anchors, which require a lot of tuning and experience to guarantee their excellent results in the face of new applications or data. To avoid the influence of anchor settings in pneumonia detection, this paper proposes an anchor-free object detection framework and RSNA dataset based on pneumonia detection. First, a data enhancement scheme is used to preprocess the chest X-ray images; second, an anchor-free object detection framework is used for pneumonia detection, which contains a feature pyramid, two-branch detection head, and focal loss. The average precision of 51.5 obtained by Intersection over Union (IoU) calculation shows that the pneumonia detection results obtained in this paper can surpass the existing classical object detection framework, providing an idea for future research and exploration.

PLUS-IS-LESS project: Procalcitonin and Lung UltraSonography-based antibiotherapy in patients with Lower rESpiratory tract infection in Swiss Emergency Departments: study protocol for a pragmatic stepped-wedge cluster-randomized trial.

BACKGROUND: Lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) are among the most frequent infections and a significant contributor to inappropriate antibiotic prescription. Currently, no single diagnostic tool can reliably identify bacterial pneumonia. We thus evaluate a multimodal approach based on a clinical score, lung ultrasound (LUS), and the inflammatory biomarker, procalcitonin (PCT) to guide prescription of antibiotics. LUS outperforms chest X-ray in the identification of pneumonia, while PCT is known to be elevated in bacterial and/or severe infections. We propose a trial to test their synergistic potential in reducing antibiotic prescription while preserving patient safety in emergency departments (ED). METHODS: The PLUS-IS-LESS study is a pragmatic, stepped-wedge cluster-randomized, clinical trial conducted in 10 Swiss EDs. It assesses the PLUS algorithm, which combines a clinical prediction score, LUS, PCT, and a clinical severity score to guide antibiotics among adults with LRTIs, compared with usual care. The co-primary endpoints are the proportion of patients prescribed antibiotics and the proportion of patients with clinical failure by day 28. Secondary endpoints include measurement of change in quality of life, length of hospital stay, antibiotic-related side effects, barriers and facilitators to the implementation of the algorithm, cost-effectiveness of the intervention, and identification of patterns of pneumonia in LUS using machine learning. DISCUSSION: The PLUS algorithm aims to optimize prescription of antibiotics through improved diagnostic performance and maximization of physician adherence, while ensuring safety. It is based on previously validated tests and does therefore not expose participants to unforeseeable risks. Cluster randomization prevents cross-contamination between study groups, as physicians are not exposed to the intervention during or before the control period. The stepped-wedge implementation of the intervention allows effect calculation from both between- and within-cluster comparisons, which enhances statistical power and allows smaller sample size than a parallel cluster design. Moreover, it enables the training of all centers for the intervention, simplifying implementation if the results prove successful. The PLUS algorithm has the potential to improve the identification of LRTIs that would benefit from antibiotics. When scaled, the expected reduction in the proportion of antibiotics prescribed has the potential to not only decrease side effects and costs but also mitigate antibiotic resistance. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered on July 19, 2022, on the ClinicalTrials.gov registry using reference number: NCT05463406. TRIAL STATUS: Recruitment started on December 5, 2022, and will be completed on November 3, 2024. Current protocol version is version 3.0, dated April 3, 2023.

Radiographic Imaging of Community-Acquired Pneumonia: A Case-Based Review.

The chest radiograph is the most common imaging examination performed in most radiology departments, and one of the more common indications for these studies is suspected infection. Radiologists must therefore be aware of less common radiographic patterns of pulmonary infection if they are to add value in the interpretation of chest radiographs for this indication. This review uses a case-based format to illustrate a range of imaging findings that can be associated with acute pulmonary infection and highlight findings that should prompt investigation for diseases other than community-acquired pneumonia to prevent misdiagnosis and delays in appropriate management.

Cost of Pediatric Pneumonia Episodes With or Without Chest Radiography.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Despite its routine use, it is unclear whether chest radiograph (CXR) is a cost-effective strategy in the workup of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in the pediatric emergency department (ED). We sought to assess the costs of CAP episodes with and without CXR among children discharged from the ED. METHODS: This was a retrospective cohort study within the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State ED and Inpatient Databases of children aged 3 months to 18 years with CAP discharged from any EDs in 8 states from 2014 to 2019. We evaluated total 28-day costs after ED discharge, including the index visit and subsequent care. Mixed-effects linear regression models adjusted for patient-level variables and illness severity were performed to evaluate the association between CXR and costs. RESULTS: We evaluated 225c781 children with CAP, and 86.2% had CXR at the index ED visit. Median costs of the 28-day episodes, index ED visits, and subsequent visits were $314 (interquartile range [IQR] 208-497), $288 (IQR 195-433), and $255 (IQR 133-637), respectively. There was a $33 (95% confidence interval [CI] 22-44) savings over 28-days per patient for those who received a CXR compared with no CXR after adjusting for patient-level variables and illness severity. Costs during subsequent visits ($26 savings, 95% CI 16-36) accounted for the majority of the savings as compared with the index ED visit ($6, 95% CI 3-10). CONCLUSIONS: Performance of CXR for CAP diagnosis is associated with lower costs when considering the downstream provision of care among patients who require subsequent health care after initial ED discharge.

Photon Counting Computed Tomography with the Radiation Dose of a Chest X-Ray: Feasibility and Diagnostic Yield.

INTRODUCTION: Photon counting (PC) detectors allow a reduction of the radiation dose in CT. Chest X-ray (CXR) is known to have a low sensitivity and specificity for detection of pneumonic infiltrates. The aims were to establish an ultra-low-dose CT (ULD-CT) protocol at a PC-CT with the radiation dose comparable to the dose of a CXR and to evaluate its clinical yield in patients with suspicion of pneumonia. METHODS: A ULD-CT protocol was established with the aim to meet the radiation dose of a CXR. In this retrospective study, all adult patients who received a ULD-CT of the chest with suspected pneumonia were included. Radiation exposure of ULD-CT and CXR was calculated. The clinical significance (new diagnosis, change of therapy, additional findings) and limitations were evaluated by a radiologist and a pulmonologist considering previous CXR and clinical data. RESULTS: Twenty-seven patients (70% male, mean age 68 years) were included. With our ULD-CT protocol, the radiation dose of a CXR could be reached (mean radiation exposure 0.11 mSv). With ULD-CT, the diagnosis changed in 11 patients (41%), there were relevant additional findings in 4 patients (15%), an infiltrate (particularly fungal infiltrate under immunosuppression) could be ruled out with certainty in 10 patients (37%), and the therapy changed in 10 patients (37%). Two patients required an additional CT with contrast medium to rule out a pulmonary embolism or pleural empyema. CONCLUSIONS: With ULD-CT, the radiation dose of a CXR could be reached while the clinical impact is higher with change in diagnosis in 41%.

The correlation between lung ultrasound scores and outcomes of high-flow nasal cannula therapy in infants with severe pneumonia.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to explore the effectiveness of bedside lung ultrasound (LUS) combined with the PaO2/FiO2 (P/F) ratio in evaluating the outcomes of high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) therapy in infants with severe pneumonia. METHODS: This retrospective study analyzed the clinical data of 150 infants diagnosed with severe pneumonia and treated with HFNC therapy at our hospital from January 2021 to December 2021. These patients were divided into two groups based on their treatment outcomes: the HFNC success group (n = 112) and the HFNC failure group (n = 38). LUS was utilized to evaluate the patients' lung conditions, and blood gas results were recorded for both groups upon admission and after 12 h of HFNC therapy. RESULTS: At admission, no significant differences were observed between the two groups in terms of age, gender, respiratory rate, partial pressure of oxygen, and partial pressure of carbon dioxide. However, the P/F ratios at admission and after 12 h of HFNC therapy were significantly lower in the HFNC failure group (193.08 ± 49.14, 228.63 ± 80.17, respectively) compared to the HFNC success group (248.51 ± 64.44, 288.93 ± 57.17, respectively) (p < 0.05). Likewise, LUS scores at admission and after 12 h were significantly higher in the failure group (18.42 ± 5.3, 18.03 ± 5.36, respectively) than in the success group (15.09 ± 4.66, 10.71 ± 3.78, respectively) (p < 0.05). Notably, in the success group, both P/F ratios and LUS scores showed significant improvement after 12 h of HFNC therapy, a trend not observed in the failure group. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that lower P/F ratios and higher LUS scores at admission and after 12 h were predictive of a greater risk of HFNC failure. ROC analysis demonstrated that an LUS score > 20.5 at admission predicted HFNC therapy failure with an AUC of 0.695, a sensitivity of 44.7%, and a specificity of 91.1%. A LUS score > 15.5 after 12 h of HFNC therapy had an AUC of 0.874, with 65.8% sensitivity and 89.3% specificity. An admission P/F ratio < 225.5 predicted HFNC therapy failure with an AUC of 0.739, 60.7% sensitivity, and 71.1% specificity, while a P/F ratio < 256.5 after 12 h of HFNC therapy had an AUC of 0.811, 74.1% sensitivity, and 73.7% specificity. CONCLUSION: Decreased LUS scores and increased P/F ratio demonstrate a strong correlation with successful HFNC treatment outcomes in infants with severe pneumonia. These findings may provide valuable support for clinicians in managing such cases.

Efficient pneumonia detection using Vision Transformers on chest X-rays.

Pneumonia is a widespread and acute respiratory infection that impacts people of all ages. Early detection and treatment of pneumonia are essential for avoiding complications and enhancing clinical results. We can reduce mortality, improve healthcare efficiency, and contribute to the global battle against a disease that has plagued humanity for centuries by devising and deploying effective detection methods. Detecting pneumonia is not only a medical necessity but also a humanitarian imperative and a technological frontier. Chest X-rays are a frequently used imaging modality for diagnosing pneumonia. This paper examines in detail a cutting-edge method for detecting pneumonia implemented on the Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture on a public dataset of chest X-rays available on Kaggle. To acquire global context and spatial relationships from chest X-ray images, the proposed framework deploys the ViT model, which integrates self-attention mechanisms and transformer architecture. According to our experimentation with the proposed Vision Transformer-based framework, it achieves a higher accuracy of 97.61%, sensitivity of 95%, and specificity of 98% in detecting pneumonia from chest X-rays. The ViT model is preferable for capturing global context, comprehending spatial relationships, and processing images that have different resolutions. The framework establishes its efficacy as a robust pneumonia detection solution by surpassing convolutional neural network (CNN) based architectures.

Attention-enhanced architecture for improved pneumonia detection in chest X-ray images.

In this paper, we propose an attention-enhanced architecture for improved pneumonia detection in chest X-ray images. A unique attention mechanism is integrated with ResNet to highlight salient features crucial for pneumonia detection. Rigorous evaluation demonstrates that our attention mechanism significantly enhances pneumonia detection accuracy, achieving a satisfactory result of 96% accuracy. To address the issue of imbalanced training samples, we integrate an enhanced focal loss into our architecture. This approach assigns higher weights to minority classes during training, effectively mitigating data imbalance. Our model's performance significantly improves, surpassing that of traditional approaches such as the pretrained ResNet-50 model. Our attention-enhanced architecture thus presents a powerful solution for pneumonia detection in chest X-ray images, achieving an accuracy of 98%. By integrating enhanced focal loss, our approach effectively addresses imbalanced training sample. Comparative analysis underscores the positive impact of our model's spatial and channel attention modules. Overall, our study advances pneumonia detection in medical imaging and underscores the potential of attention-enhanced architectures for improved diagnostic accuracy and patient outcomes. Our findings offer valuable insights into image diagnosis and pneumonia prevention, contributing to future research in medical imaging and machine learning.

Interpretable CNN-Multilevel Attention Transformer for Rapid Recognition of Pneumonia From Chest X-Ray Images.

Chest imaging plays an essential role in diagnosing and predicting patients with COVID-19 with evidence of worsening respiratory status. Many deep learning-based approaches for pneumonia recognition have been developed to enable computer-aided diagnosis. However, the long training and inference time makes them inflexible, and the lack of interpretability reduces their credibility in clinical medical practice. This paper aims to develop a pneumonia recognition framework with interpretability, which can understand the complex relationship between lung features and related diseases in chest X-ray (CXR) images to provide high-speed analytics support for medical practice. To reduce the computational complexity to accelerate the recognition process, a novel multi-level self-attention mechanism within Transformer has been proposed to accelerate convergence and emphasize the task-related feature regions. Moreover, a practical CXR image data augmentation has been adopted to address the scarcity of medical image data problems to boost the model's performance. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated on the classic COVID-19 recognition task using the widespread pneumonia CXR image dataset. In addition, abundant ablation experiments validate the effectiveness and necessity of all of the components of the proposed method.

Evaluation of the diagnostic performance of physician lung ultrasound versus chest radiography for pneumonia diagnosis in a peri-urban South African cohort.

BACKGROUND: Lung ultrasound (US), which is radiation-free and cheaper than chest radiography (CXR), may be a useful modality for the diagnosis of pediatric pneumonia, but there are limited data from low- and middle-income countries. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of non-radiologist, physician-performed lung US compared to CXR for pneumonia in children in a resource-constrained, African setting. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Children under 5 years of age enrolled in a South African birth cohort study, the Drakenstein Child Health Study, who presented with clinically defined pneumonia and had a CXR performed also had a  lung US performed by a study doctor. Each modality was reported by two readers, using standardized methodology. Agreement between modalities, accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) of lung US and inter-rater agreement were assessed. Either consolidation or any abnormality (consolidation or interstitial picture) was considered as endpoints. In the 98 included cases (median age: 7.2 months; 53% male; 69% hospitalized), prevalence was 37% vs. 39% for consolidation and 52% vs. 76% for any abnormality on lung US and CXR, respectively. Agreement between modalities was poor for consolidation (observed agreement=61%, Kappa=0.18, 95% confidence interval [95% CI]: - 0.02 to 0.37) and for any abnormality (observed agreement=56%, Kappa=0.10, 95% CI: - 0.07 to 0.28). Using CXR as the reference standard, sensitivity of lung US was low for consolidation (47%, 95% CI: 31-64%) or any abnormality (5%, 95% CI: 43-67%), while specificity was moderate for consolidation (70%, 95% CI: 57-81%), but lower for any abnormality (58%, 95% CI: 37-78%). Overall inter-observer agreement of CXR was poor (Kappa=0.25, 95% CI: 0.11-0.37) and was significantly lower than the substantial agreement of lung US (Kappa=0.61, 95% CI: 0.50-0.75). Lung US demonstrated better agreement than CXR for all categories of findings, showing a significant difference for consolidation (Kappa=0.72, 95% CI: 0.58-0.86 vs. 0.32, 95% CI: 0.13-0.51). CONCLUSION: Lung US identified consolidation with similar frequency to CXR, but there was poor agreement between modalities. The significantly higher inter-observer agreement of LUS compared to CXR supports the utilization of lung US by clinicians in a low-resource setting.