False-positive lung cancer screening results increase health care costs and may lead to unintentional physician-caused injury and mortality.

‘False-positive lung cancer screening results increase health care costs and may lead to unintentional physician-caused injury and mortality.’

To address the problem of false positives in lung cancer screening Dr. Peikert and Fabien Maldonado, M.D., from Vanderbilt University, along with their collaborators used a radiomics approach to analyze the CT images of all lung cancers diagnosed as part of the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial. Radiomics is a field of medicine that involves extracting large amounts of quantitative data from medical images and using computer programs to identify disease characteristics that cannot be seen by the naked eye. 




Researchers tested a set of 57 variables for volume, nodule density, shape, nodule surface characteristics and texture of the surrounding lung tissue. They identified eight variables which enabled them to distinguish a benign nodule from a cancerous nodule. None of the eight variables were directly linked to nodule size and the researchers did not include any demographic variables such as age, smoking status and prior cancer history as part of their testing. Dr. Peikert says that while the technology looks very promising and has the potential to change the way physicians evaluate incidentally detected lung nodules, it still requires additional validation.
Source-Eurekalert