Although RV/LV ratio has been shown to be a good prognostic biomarker for patients suffering from PE, it's not routinely reported in radiology departments, said presenter Germán González, PhD, of the Madrid M+Visión Consortium, a partnership of the regional government of Madrid in Spain and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"This could be due to the time that it takes to compute the ratio: between 2 and 5 minutes in our internal tests," González told AuntMinnie.com. "Having a tool that reliably and transparently computes such a ratio and includes it in the medical report can help patient stratification, with the ultimate aim of identifying those patients who might benefit from more aggressive fibrinolytic therapies."
The group introduced and validated a completely automated algorithm to compute the RV/LV ratio from nongated CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA) images. When evaluated against a radiologist reference standard, the algorithm achieved equally high accuracy in predicting 30-day PE-specific mortality plus the need for intensive therapies.