Assessment of a Radiomics-based Computer-Aided Diagnosis Tool for Cancer Risk Stratification of Pulmonary Nodules

Accurate malignancy risk stratification of pulmonary nodules (PNs) is critical to ensuring that cancer is diagnosed in a timely manner and patients do not undergo unnecessary diagnostic procedures. Preliminary data suggests that a radiomics-based lung cancer prediction (LCP) computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) tool is effective in risk stratifying PNs and may improve clinicians' PN management decisions. This is a pragmatic clinical trial evaluating the effect of this CAD tool on clinicians' management of PNs compared to usual care. Individuals eligible for this study will include adults aged 35-89 years who are scheduled to be evaluated at a Penn Medicine PN clinic for a newly discovered PN 8-30mm in maximal diameter on CT imaging. Exclusion criteria include lack of CT imaging data at the time of index clinic visit, thoracic lymphadenopathy by CT size criteria, presence of pulmonary masses (>3cm in maximal diameter), PNs with popcorn calcification (consistent with benign etiology), pure ground-glass subsolid PNs, a history of lung cancer, and history of any active cancer within 5 years. Enrolled participants will undergo 1:1 stratified randomization to one of two groups, defined by the PN malignancy risk stratification strategy used by evaluating clinicians: 1) usual care (clinician assessment) or 2) clinician assessment + CAD-based risk stratification using the LCP-CAD tool. The control arm will be usual care, defined as routine clinician assessment of PN malignancy risk. In the experimental arm, clinicians will be provided a report with the CAD tool estimate of malignancy risk for the PN being evaluated.