• Sadayuki Ito, Kei Ando, Kazuyoshi Kobayashi, Hiroaki Nakashima, Masahiro Oda, Masaaki Machino, Shunsuke Kanbara, Taro Inoue, Hidetoshi Yamaguchi, Hiroyuki Koshimizu, Kensaku Mori, Naoki Ishiguro, and Shiro Imagama.
• Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan.
• Spine. 2021 Jan 15; 46 (2): 9510095-100.

Study DesignA retrospective analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was conducted.ObjectiveThis study aims to develop an automated system for the detection of spinal schwannoma, by employing deep learning based on object detection from MRI. The performance of the proposed system was verified to compare the performances of spine surgeons.Summary Of Background DataSeveral MRI scans were conducted for the diagnoses of patients suspected to suffer from spinal diseases. Typically, spinal diseases do not involve tumors on the spinal cord, although a few tumors may exist at the unexpectable level or without symptom by chance. It is difficult to recognize these tumors; in some cases, these tumors may be overlooked. Hence, a deep learning approach based on object detection can minimize the probability of overlooking these tumors.MethodsData from 50 patients with spinal schwannoma who had undergone MRI were retrospectively reviewed. Sagittal T1- and T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (T1WI and T2WI) were used in the object detection training and for validation. You Only Look Once version3 was used to develop the object detection system, and its accuracy was calculated. The performance of the proposed system was compared to that of two doctors.ResultsThe accuracies of the proposed object detection based on T1W1, T2W1, and both T1W1 and T2W1 were 80.3%, 91.0%, and 93.5%, respectively. The accuracies of the doctors were 90.2% and 89.3%.ConclusionAutomated object detection of spinal schwannoma was achieved. The proposed system yielded a high accuracy that was comparable to that of the doctors.Level of Evidence: 4.Copyright © 2020 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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