Deep Learning Models for Coronary Atherosclerosis Detection in Coronary CT Angiography.

Background: Patients with atherosclerosis have a rather high risk of showing complications, if not diagnosed quickly and efficiently.

Objective: Objective: In this paper we aim to test and compare different pre-trained deep learning models, to find the best model for atherosclerosis detection in coronary CT angiography.

Methods: We experimented with different pre-trained deep learning models and fine-tuned each model to achieve the best classification accuracy. We then used the Haar wavelet decomposition to improve the model’s sensitivity

Results: We found that the Resnet101 architecture had the best performance with an accuracy of 95.2%, 60.8% sensitivity, and 90.48% PPV. Compared to the state of the art which uses a 3D CNN and achieved 90.9% accuracy, 68.9% Sensitivity and 58.8% PPV, sensitivity was quite low. To improve the sensitivity, we chose to use the Haar wavelet decomposition and trained the CNN model with the module of the three details: Low_High, High_Low, and High_High. The best sensitivity reached 80% with the CNN_KNN classifier.

Conclusions: It is possible to perform atherosclerosis detection straight from CCTA images using a pretrained Resnet101, which has good accuracy and PPV. The low sensitivity can be improved using Haar wavelet decomposition and CNN-KNN classifier.