Deep Learning on Bone Scintigraphy to Detect Abnormal Cardiac Uptake at Risk of Cardiac Amyloidosis

JACC Cardiovasc Imaging. 2023 Aug;16(8):1085-1095. doi: 10.1016/j.jcmg.2023.01.014. Epub 2023 Apr 12.

Abstract

Background: Cardiac uptake on technetium-99m whole-body scintigraphy (WBS) is almost pathognomonic of transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis. The rare false positives are often related to light-chain cardiac amyloidosis. However, this scintigraphic feature remains largely unknown, leading to misdiagnosis despite characteristic images. A retrospective review of all WBSs in a hospital database to detect those with cardiac uptake may allow the identification of undiagnosed patients.

Objectives: The authors sought to develop and validate a deep learning-based model that automatically detects significant cardiac uptake (Perugini grade ≥2) on WBS from large hospital databases in order to retrieve patients at risk of cardiac amyloidosis.

Methods: The model is based on a convolutional neural network with image-level labels. The performance evaluation was performed with C-statistics using a 5-fold cross-validation scheme stratified so that the proportion of positive and negative WBSs remained constant across folds and using an external validation data set.

Results: The training data set consisted of 3,048 images: 281 positives (Perugini grade ≥2) and 2,767 negatives. The external validation data set consisted of 1,633 images: 102 positives and 1,531 negatives. The performance of the 5-fold cross-validation and external validation was as follows: 98.9% (± 1.0) and 96.1% for sensitivity, 99.5% (± 0.4) and 99.5% for specificity, and 0.999 (SD = 0.000) and 0.999 for the area under the curve of the receiver-operating characteristic curves. Sex, age <90 years, body mass index, injection-acquisition delay, radionuclides, and the indication of WBS only slightly affected performances.

Conclusions: The authors' detection model is effective at identifying patients with cardiac uptake Perugini grade ≥2 on WBS and may help in the diagnosis of patients with cardiac amyloidosis.

Keywords: amyloidosis; bone scintigraphy; machine learning.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Amyloidosis* / diagnostic imaging
  • Cardiomyopathies* / diagnostic imaging
  • Deep Learning*
  • Heart
  • Humans
  • Predictive Value of Tests
  • Radionuclide Imaging