Classification of the quality of canine and feline ventrodorsal and dorsoventral thoracic radiographs through machine learning

Abstract

Thoracic radiographs are an essential diagnostic tool in companion animal medicine and are frequently used as a part of routine workups in patients presenting for coughing, respiratory distress, cardiovascular diseases, and for staging of neoplasia. Quality control is a critical aspect of radiology practice in preventing misdiagnosis and ensuring consistent, accurate, and reliable diagnostic imaging. Implementing an effective quality control procedure in radiology can impact patient outcomes, facilitate clinical decision‐making, and decrease healthcare costs. In this study, a machine learning‐based quality classification model is suggested for canine and feline thoracic radiographs captured in both ventrodorsal and dorsoventral positions. The problem of quality classification was divided into collimation, positioning, and exposure, and then an automatic classification method was proposed for each based on deep learning and machine learning. We utilized a dataset of 899 radiographs of dogs and cats. Evaluations using fivefold cross‐validation resulted in an F1 score and AUC score of 91.33 (95% CI: 88.37–94.29) and 91.10 (95% CI: 88.16–94.03), respectively. Results indicated that the proposed automatic quality classification has the potential to be implemented in radiology clinics to improve radiograph quality and reduce nondiagnostic images.