Diagnostic Performance of Multimodal Large Language Models for Central Venous Catheter Assessment Chest Radiographs in the Intensive Care Unit.

BACKGROUND

Chest radiography remains central to post-procedural assessment of central venous catheter (CVC) placement in intensive care units. Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) can process medical images, but their reliability for practical radiography tasks remains uncertain. This study assessed the diagnostic performance of MLLMs and intensivists for CVC access classification, CVC tip assessment, and pneumothorax-related radiographic findings.

METHODS

In this retrospective diagnostic performance study, consecutive portable anteroposterior chest radiographs obtained after CVC placement in adult critically ill patients were independently evaluated by four intensivists and five MLLMs. A radiologist consensus served as the reference standard. Interobserver agreement and diagnostic performance were assessed using Fleiss' kappa, Gwet AC1, Cohen's kappa, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, F1 score, balanced accuracy, and Matthews correlation coefficient.

RESULTS

The final cohort included 183 unique radiographs. Intensivist reviewers showed high performance for CVC access classification but lower and more heterogeneous performance for CVC tip-position assessment. Among MLLMs, CVC access accuracy ranged from 0.339 to 0.874, whereas CVC tip assessment was dominated by almost universal classification of tips as appropriate, with near-zero specificity and chance-level balanced accuracy. For pneumothorax-related findings, all MLLMs classified every case as negative. Intensivist reviewers had higher balanced accuracy than MLLMs for CVC access classification (difference, 0.420; 95% CI, 0.349-0.490; p < 0.001) and CVC tip assessment (difference, 0.247; 95% CI, 0.205-0.290; p < 0.001). Pneumothorax analyses were exploratory because only five positive cases were present.

CONCLUSIONS

The evaluated MLLMs showed unreliable diagnostic performance compared with experienced intensivists. Apparent performance was influenced by class imbalance and dominant-response behavior, supporting cautious task-specific validation and complete diagnostic performance reporting.