Artificial intelligence aids doctors in diagnosing necrotizing enterocolitis and predicting surgery using abdominal radiographs: a multicenter study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is challenging to diagnose due to its subtle radiological features on abdominal radiographs (ARs) and considerable variability in interpretation among clinicians, especially those with limited experience, which may delay timely intervention. The study aimed to develop a convolutional neural network (CNN) based artificial intelligence (AI) model using ARs to predict NEC and the need for surgical intervention, and to evaluate its ability to assist clinicians in AR interpretation.

Methods

We retrospectively collected 738 ARs from 576 preterm infants across three medical centers. The ARs were labeled into three categories: non-NEC, medical-NEC, and surgical-NEC. Data from two centers (set A, n=347; set B, n=130) were randomly s

SUBMITTER: Li YT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12591905 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature