Deep learning for osteoporosis screening using an anteroposterior hip radiograph image

Osteoporosis is a common bone disorder characterized by decreased bone mineral density (BMD) and increased bone fragility, which can lead to fractures and eventually cause morbidity and mortality. It is of great concern that the one-year mortality rate for osteoporotic hip fractures could be as high as 22%, regardless of the treatment. Currently, BMD measurement is the standard method for osteoporosis diagnosis, but it is costly and requires special equipment. While a plain radiograph can be obtained more simply and inexpensively, it is not used for diagnosis. Deep learning technologies had been applied to various medical contexts, yet few to osteoporosis unless they were trained on the advanced investigative images, such as computed tomography. The purpose of this study was to develop a deep learning model using the anteroposterior hip radiograph images and measure its diagnostic accuracy for osteoporosis.

We retrospectively collected all anteroposterior hip radiograph images of patients from 2013 to 2021 at a tertiary care hospital. The BMD measurements of the included patients were reviewed, and the radiograph images that had a time interval of more than two years from the measurements were excluded. All images were randomized using a computer-generated unequal allocation into two datasets, i.e., 80% of images were used for the training dataset and the remaining 20% for the test dataset. The T score of BMD obtained from the ipsilateral femoral neck of the same patient closest to the date of the performed radiograph was chosen. The T score cutoff value of − 2.5 was used to diagnose osteoporosis. Five deep learning models were trained on the training dataset, and their diagnostic performances were evaluated using the test dataset. Finally, the best model was determined by the area under the curves (AUC).

A total of 363 anteroposterior hip radiograph images were identified. The average time interval between the performed radiograph and the BMD measurement was 6.6 months. Two-hundred-thirteen images were labeled as non-osteoporosis (T score >  − 2.5), and the other 150 images as osteoporosis (T score ≤  − 2.5). The best-selected deep learning model achieved an AUC of 0.91 and accuracy of 0.82.

This study demonstrates the potential of deep learning for osteoporosis screening using anteroposterior hip radiographs. The results suggest that the deep learning model might potentially be used as a screening tool to find patients at risk for osteoporosis to perform further BMD measurement.