Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Quantification of Longitudinal HRCT Changes During Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis: An Exploratory Proof-of-Concept Study.

Background

Treatment monitoring in pulmonary tuberculosis increasingly requires assessment of residual inflammatory burden and structural lung damage beyond microbiologic response alone. High-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) can provide this information, but interpretation of serial examinations is time-consuming and partly subjective. This study did not aim to evaluate AI for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis. Instead, it explored whether artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted quantitative HRCT analysis could support longitudinal assessment of treatment-related imaging changes in patients with microbiologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective, single-center, exploratory longitudinal study of patients receiving treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis. HRCT examinations acquired at diagnosis and during follow-up were anonymized, reviewed by an expert thoracic radiologist, and processed using AVIEW Lung Texture (Coreline Soft v2.0). The software quantified total lung volume and six predefined parenchymal categories: normal lung, ground-glass opacity, consolidation, reticulation, honeycombing, and emphysema.

Results

Ninety-six patients contributed 256 HRCT examinations. The most frequent software-detected abnormalities were ground-glass opacity, consolidation, and emphysema-labeled low-attenuation areas. Ground-glass opacity and consolidation showed the clearest decline across serial examinations, consistent with regression of active inflammatory disease during treatment. Reticulation showed a heterogeneous course, likely reflecting both inflammatory resolution and residual structural remodeling. Honeycombing was infrequent and quantitatively limited. Lung volume changed variably and did not consistently parallel visual improvement. A key methodological limitation was the absence of a dedicated cavity class. As a result, emphysema-labeled low-attenuation areas should not be interpreted as conventional emphysema alone, because tuberculous cavities and post-destructive abnormalities were frequently included in this category.

Conclusions

AI-assisted HRCT quantification may support longitudinal assessment of pulmonary tuberculosis by providing structured and reproducible measures of interval change. However, tuberculosis-specific interpretation remains dependent on expert radiologic oversight, particularly in cavitary disease.