Artificial intelligence in paediatric radiology: international survey of health care professionals’ opinions

The nature of paediatric radiology work poses several challenges for developing and implementing artificial intelligence (AI) tools, but opinions of those working in the field are currently unknown.

To evaluate the attitudes and perceptions toward AI amongst health care professionals working within children’s imaging services.

A web-based questionnaire was distributed to the membership of several paediatric and general radiological societies over a 4-month period (1 Feb – 31 May 2020). Survey questions covered attitudes toward AI in general, future impacts and suggested areas for development specifically within paediatric imaging.

Two hundred and forty responses were collected with the majority being from radiologists (159/240, 66.3%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 59.8–72.2%) or allied health care professionals (72/240, 31.3%; 95% CI 25.4–37.5%). Respondents agreed that AI could potentially alert radiologists to imaging abnormalities (148/240, 61.7%; 95% CI 55.2–67.9%) but preferred that results were checked by a human (200/240, 83.3%; 95% CI 78.0–87.8%). The majority did not believe jobs in paediatric radiology would be replaced by AI (205/240, 85.4%; 95% CI 80.3–89.6%) and that the development of AI tools should focus on improved diagnostic accuracy (77/240, 32.1%; 95% CI 26.2–38.4%), workflow efficiencies (60/240, 25.0%; 95% CI 19.7–30.9%) and patient safety (54/240, 22.5%; 95% CI 17.4–28.3%). The majority of European Society of Paediatric Radiology (ESPR) members (67/81, 82.7%; 95% CI 72.7–90.2%) welcomed the idea of a dedicated paediatric radiology AI task force with emphasis on educational events and anonymised dataset curation.

Imaging health care professionals working with children had a positive outlook regarding the use of AI in paediatric radiology, and did not feel their jobs were threatened. Future AI tools would be most beneficial for easily automated tasks and most practitioners welcomed the opportunity for further AI educational activities.