AI Model Identifies Risk of Mortality from Chest X-Rays

An artificial intelligence (AI) model could help identify patients at an increased risk of long-term mortality based on their chest X-rays, according to the findings of a study published in JAMA Network Open. The convolutional neural network, named CXR-risk, found that 53% of people it identified as very high-risk for future heart attack, lung cancer or death died over 12 years. In comparison, fewer than 4% of those whom CXR-risk identified as very low-risk died over 12 years. The model was developed and trained on data sets from two clinical trials -- Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO) and National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) -- and found that mortality rates for patients with very high-risk scores had an 18- (PLCO) and 15-fold (NLST) higher mortality rate compared to those in the very low-risk category. "This is a new way to extract prognostic information from everyday diagnostic tests," said Michael Lu, M.D., MPH, radiology department at Massachusetts General Hospital.