Development and Validation of an Artificial Intelligence Model for Detecting Rib Fractures on Chest Radiographs

Background: Chest radiography is the standard method for detecting rib fractures. Our study aims to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) model that, with only a relatively small amount of training data, can identify rib fractures on chest radiographs and accurately mark their precise locations, thereby achieving a diagnostic accuracy comparable to that of medical professionals. Methods: For this retrospective study, we developed an AI model using 540 chest radiographs (270 normal and 270 with rib fractures) labeled for use with Detectron2 which incorporates a faster region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) enhanced with a feature pyramid network (FPN). The model’s ability to classify radiographs and detect rib fractures was assessed. Furthermore, we compared the model’s performance to that of 12 physicians, including six board-certified anesthesiologists and six residents, through an observer performance test. Results: Regarding the radiographic classification performance of the AI model, the sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) were 0.87, 0.83, and 0.89, respectively. In terms of rib fracture detection performance, the sensitivity, false-positive rate, and free-response receiver operating characteristic (JAFROC) figure of merit (FOM) were 0.62, 0.3, and 0.76, respectively. The AI model showed no statistically significant difference in the observer performance test compared to 11 of 12 and 10 of 12 physicians, respectively. Conclusions: We developed an AI model trained on a limited dataset that demonstrated a rib fracture classification and detection performance comparable to that of an experienced physician.