title: Fate of pulmonary nodules detected by computer-aided diagnosis and physician review on the computed tomography simulation images for hepatocellular carcinoma.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the frequency and clinical significance of detected incidental lung nodules found on computed tomography (CT) simulation images for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) and a physician review.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sixty-seven treatment-naïve HCC patients treated with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization and radiotherapy (RT) were included for the study. Portal phase of simulation CT images was used for CAD analysis and a physician review for lung nodule detection. For automated nodule detection, a commercially available CAD system was used. To assess the performance of lung nodule detection for lung metastasis, the sensitivity, negative predictive value (NPV), and positive predictive value (PPV) were calculated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Forty-six patients had incidental nodules detected by CAD with a total of 109 nodules. Only 20 (18.3%) nodules were considered to be significant nodules by a physician review. The number of significant nodules detected by both of CAD or a physician review was 24 in 9 patients. Lung metastases developed in 11 of 46 patients who had any type of nodule. The sensitivities were 58.3% and 100% based on patient number and on the number of nodules, respectively. The NPVs were 91.4% and 100%, respectively. And the PPVs were 77.8% and 91.7%, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Incidental detection of metastatic nodules was not an uncommon event. From our study, CAD could be applied to CT simulation images allowing for an increase in detection of metastatic nodules.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Hyojung
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Jin-Sung
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Hee Chul
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Dongryul
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Oh
keywords: Computer-assisted diagnosis; Hepatocellular carcinoma; Radiotherapy