A comprehensive approach for osteoporosis detection through chest CT analysis and bone turnover markers: harnessing radiomics and deep learning techniques

Purpose The main objective of this study is to assess the possibility of using radiomics, deep learning, and transfer learning methods for the analysis of chest CT scans. An additional aim is to combine these techniques with bone turnover markers to identify and screen for osteoporosis in patients. Method A total of 488 patients who had undergone chest CT and bone turnover marker testing, and had known bone mineral density, were included in this study. ITK-SNAP software was used to delineate regions of interest, while radiomics features were extracted using Python. Multiple 2D and 3D deep learning models were trained to identify these regions of interest. The effectiveness of these techniques in screening for osteoporosis in patients was compared. Result Clinical models based on gender, age, and β-cross achieved an accuracy of 0.698 and an AUC of 0.665. Radiomics models, which utilized 14 selected radiomics features, achieved a maximum accuracy of 0.750 and an AUC of 0.739. The test group yielded promising results: the 2D Deep Learning model achieved an accuracy of 0.812 and an AUC of 0.855, while the 3D Deep Learning model performed even better with an accuracy of 0.854 and an AUC of 0.906. Similarly, the 2D Transfer Learning model achieved an accuracy of 0.854 and an AUC of 0.880, whereas the 3D Transfer Learning model exhibited an accuracy of 0.740 and an AUC of 0.737. Overall, the application of 3D deep learning and 2D transfer learning techniques on chest CT scans showed excellent screening performance in the context of osteoporosis. Conclusion Bone turnover markers may not be necessary for osteoporosis screening, as 3D deep learning and 2D transfer learning techniques utilizing chest CT scans proved to be equally effective alternatives.