PURPOSE: To evaluate PANCANAI, a previously developed AI model for pancreatic cancer (PC) detection, on a longitudinal cohort of patients. In particular, aiming for PC detection on scans acquired before histopathologic diagnosis was assessed.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The model has been previously trained to predict PC suspicion on 2134 portal venous CTs. In this study, the algorithm was evaluated on a retrospective cohort of Danish patients with biopsy-confirmed PC and with CT scans acquired between 2006 and 2016. The sensitivity was measured, and bootstrapping was performed to provide median and 95% CI.

RESULTS: The study included 1083 PC patients (mean age: 69 y ± 11, 575 men). CT scans were divided into 2 groups: (1) concurrent diagnosis (CD): 1022 CT scans acquired within 2 months around histopathologic diagnosis, and (2) prediagnosis (PD): 198 CT scans acquired before histopathologic diagnosis (median 7 months before diagnosis). The sensitivity was 91.8% (938 of 1022; 95% CI: 89.9-93.5) and 68.7% (137 of 198; 95% CI: 62.1-75.3) on the CD and PD groups, respectively. Sensitivity on CT scans acquired 1 year or more before diagnosis was 53.9% (36 of 67; 95% CI: 41.8-65.7). Sensitivity on CT scans acquired at stage I was 82.9% (29 of 35; 95% CI: 68.6-94.3).

CONCLUSION: PANCANAI showed high sensitivity for automatic PC detection on a large retrospective cohort of biopsy-confirmed patients. PC suspicion was detected in more than half of the CT scans that were acquired at least a year before histopathologic diagnosis.