Automated decision support for bone scintigraphy

A quantitative analysis of metastatic bone involvement can be an important prognostic indicator of survival or a tool in monitoring treatment response in patients with cancer. The purpose of this study was to develop a completely automated decision support system for whole-body bone scans using image analysis and artificial neural networks. The study population consisted of 795 whole-body bone scans. The decision support system first detects and classifies individual hotspots as being metastatic or not. A second prediction model then classifies the scan regarding metastatic disease on a patient level. The test set sensitivity and specificity was 95% and 64% respectively, corresponding to 95% area under the receiver operating characteristics curve.