Texture analysis of chest X-ray images for the diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia

Purpose:
Medical imaging is one of the main methods of diagnosing COVID-19, along with real-time reverse trans­cription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests. The purpose of the study was to analyse the texture parameters of chest X-rays (CXR) of patients suspected of having COVID-19.

Material and methods:
Texture parameters of the CXRs of 70 patients with symptoms typical of COVID-19 infection were analysed using LIFEx software. The regions of interest (ROIs) included each lung separately, for which 57 para­meters were tested. The control group consisted of 30 healthy, age-matched patients with no pathological findings in CXRs.

Results:
According to the ROC analysis, 13 of the tested parameters differentiate the radiological image of lungs with COVID-19 features from the image of healthy lungs: GLRLM_LRHGE (AUC 0.91); DISCRETIZED_Q3 (AUC 0.90); GLZLM_HGZE (AUC 0.90); GLRLM_HGRE (AUC 0.89); DISCRETIZED_mean (AUC 0.89); DISCRETIZED_Q2 (AUC 0.61); GLRLM_SRHGE (AUC 0.87); GLZLM_LZHGE (AUC 0.87); GLZLM_SZHGE (AUC 0.84); DISCRETIZED_Q1 (AUC 0.81); NGLDM_Coarseness (AUC 0.70); DISCRETIZED_std (AUC 0.64); CONVENTIONAL_Q2 (AUC 0.61).

Conclusions:
Selected texture parameters of radiological CXRs make it possible to distinguish COVID-19 features from healthy ones.