IMR Press / RCM / Volume 24 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.31083/j.rcm2401007
Open Access Original Research
Interpreting Infrared Thermography with Deep Learning to Assess the Mortality Risk of Critically Ill Patients at Risk of Hypoperfusion
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1 Department of Critical Care Medicine, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, 200032 Shanghai, China
2 Hybrid Imaging System Laboratory, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Vision and Imaging, School of Information Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, 201210 Shanghai, China
3 Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, 200032 Shanghai, China
4 College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
5 Department of information and intelligence development, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, 200032 Shanghai, China
6 Department of Critical Care Medicine, Xiamen Branch, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, 361015 Xiamen, Fujian, China
*Correspondence: gaofei@shanghaitech.edu.cn (Fei Gao); tu.guowei@zs-hospital.sh.cn (Guo-wei Tu); luo.zhe@zs-hospital.sh.cn (Zhe Luo)
These authors contributed equally.
Academic Editors: Eddie Yin Kwee Ng and Jerome L. Fleg
Rev. Cardiovasc. Med. 2023, 24(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.31083/j.rcm2401007
Submitted: 25 September 2022 | Revised: 2 November 2022 | Accepted: 3 November 2022 | Published: 4 January 2023
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Thermography in Cardiovascular Diseases)
Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by IMR Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Abstract

Background: Hypoperfusion, a common manifestation of many critical illnesses, could lead to abnormalities in body surface thermal distribution. However, the interpretation of thermal images is difficult. Our aim was to assess the mortality risk of critically ill patients at risk of hypoperfusion in a prospective cohort by infrared thermography combined with deep learning methods. Methods: This post-hoc study was based on a cohort at high-risk of hypoperfusion. Patients’ legs were selected as the region of interest. Thermal images and conventional hypoperfusion parameters were collected. Six deep learning models were attempted to derive the risk of mortality (range: 0 to 100%) for each patient. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) was used to evaluate predictive accuracy. Results: Fifty-five hospital deaths occurred in a cohort consisting of 373 patients. The conventional hypoperfusion (capillary refill time and diastolic blood pressure) and thermal (low temperature area rate and standard deviation) parameters demonstrated similar predictive accuracies for hospital mortality (AUROC 0.73 and 0.77). The deep learning methods, especially the ResNet (18), could further improve the accuracy. The AUROC of ResNet (18) was 0.94 with a sensitivity of 84% and a specificity of 91% when using a cutoff of 36%. ResNet (18) presented a significantly increasing trend in the risk of mortality in patients with normotension (13 [7 to 26]), hypotension (18 [8 to 32]) and shock (28 [14 to 62]). Conclusions: Interpreting infrared thermography with deep learning enables accurate and non-invasive assessment of the severity of patients at risk of hypoperfusion.

Keywords
deep learning
infrared thermography
hypoperfusion
critically ill patients
secondary analysis
Funding
2020ZHZS01/Smart Medical Care of Zhongshan Hospital
20DZ2261200/Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality
82070085/National Natural Science Foundation of China
2020ZSLC38/Clinical Research Project of Zhongshan Hospital
2020ZSLC27/Clinical Research Project of Zhongshan Hospital
2021ZSGG06/Project for Elite Backbone of Zhongshan Hospital
20214Y0136/Research Project of Shanghai Municipal Health Commission
Figures
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