Automatic Deep Learning-assisted Detection and Grading of Abnormalities in Knee MRI Studies

Purpose: To test the hypothesis that artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can aid in identifying and assessing lesion severity in the cartilage, bone marrow, meniscus, and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the knee, improving overall MRI interreader agreement. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was conducted on 1435 knee MRI studies (n = 294 patients; mean age, 43 years 6 15 [standard deviation]; 153 women) collected within three previous studies (from 2011 to 2014). All MRI studies were acquired using high-spatial-resolution three-dimensional fast-spin-echo CUBE sequence. Three-dimensional convolutional neural networks were developed to detect the regions of interest within MRI studies and grade abnormalities of the cartilage, bone marrow, menisci, and ACL. Evaluation included sensitivity, specificity, and Cohen linear-weighted k. The impact of AI-aided grading in intergrader agreement was assessed on an external dataset. Results: Binary lesion sensitivity reported for all tissues was between 70% and 88%. Specificity ranged from 85% to 89%. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for all tissues ranged from 0.83 to 0.93. Deep learning-assisted intergrader Cohen k agreement significantly improved in 10 of 16 comparisons among two attending physicians and two trainees for all tissues. Conclusion: The three-dimensional convolutional neural network had high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for knee-lesion-severity scoring and also increased intergrader agreement when used on an external dataset. Supplemental material is available for this article. (C) RSNA, 2021