Multi-Center Study Presented at ECR Reports Reduced Report Turn-Around Times for Chest CT using AI

A study conducted by Moscow Center for Diagnostics & Telemedicine and presented at ECR 2021 reported a 30 percent reduction in report turnaround times to analyze chest CT scans using an AI-powered solution during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers introduced RADLogics’ AI-Powered solution into their radiology workflow to analyze chest CT scans during the COVID-19 pandemic, saving the equivalent of 7 minutes per case.

Presented by Dr. Tatiana Logunova, MD, of the Research and Practical Clinical Center for Diagnostics and Telemedicine Technologies of the Moscow Health Care Department during the recent ECR 2021 conference, the extensive research included a total of 128,350 Chest-CT scans, of which 36,358 were processed by RADLogics AI-Powered COVID-19 solution, reported by 570 participating radiologists at over 130 hospitals and outpatient clinics in Moscow.

The study was conducted over two separate phases with the first taking place between April 30, 2020 to June 18, 2020 and the second taking place between June 18, 2020 to August 31, 2020. The study found that report turnaround time was significantly shorter for all time periods in a group of radiologists with available AI results that were seamlessly integrated into radiologists’ current workflow, compared to a group with non-available AI results.

Additional clinical parameters were added to the standard of care in the second time period, including the addition of a disease severity score. The added information created an increased workload on radiologists, which increased the average read time by more than 25 percent. In response, the RADLogics AI-Powered COVID-19 solution was enhanced to support the new clinical requirements. Results shown indicate that with the augmented AI solution, including all clinical measurements and severity scoring, was able to maintain the overall productivity gain of 30 percent.

“Early on in the pandemic, it was clear to us that COVID-19 required new healthcare management approaches, and effective clinical management depends more on disease severity than on the virus identification,” said Dr. Sergey Morozov, MD, PhD, MPH, who serves as CEO of Moscow Diagnostics and Telemedicine Center. “As a result, the aim of our research was to determine the impact of the introduction of AI-services analyzing chest CTs for COVID-19 related findings on the radiologists’ workflow and performance. In addition to finding that the integration of AI did not have a negative effect on the interpretation or report accuracy, our researchers found a significant improvement in productivity and report turnaround time by the expert radiologists that leveraged AI.” 

Dr. Morozov’s research team from the Moscow Center for Diagnostics & Telemedicine Center included Drs. T. Logunova, A. E. Andreychenko, V. Klyashtorny, K. M. Arzamasov, and A. Vladzymyrskyy. The presentation entitled “Artificial intelligence services impact on radiologist's performance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic” is available for ECR 2021 registrants at https://connect.myesr.org/course/artificial-intelligence-ai-and-covid-19/. 

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