CT Scan Protocols and Region-of-Interest Segmentation

Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) was performed with a 64-detector row scanner CT machine (GE Healthcare, United States). The scanning parameters were as follows: tube current, 250 mA; tube voltage, 120 kV; and slice thickness, 5 mm. Contrast agent (Ultravist, Bayer, Germany) for CECT was injected through a pump injector at a rate of 3.0 ml/s from the antecubital vein. Hepatic-arterial phase CT images were obtained at 35 s. All CT images were input into the Dr. wise AI software (Deepwise Inc., China). The regions of interest (ROIs) were delineated manually by two senior radiologists who had 15 years experience (reader 1, Prof. Huijie Jiang) and 13 years experience (reader 2, Prof. Jinling Zhang). The entire cohort included 399 patients who were randomly divided into a training dataset (319 cases) and validation dataset (80 cases) by a ratio of 8:2. The validation dataset evaluated the accuracy of the training dataset. The ROIs of CT images from the training cohort and the validation cohorts were manually segmented by the two readers who were specifically blinded to the therapy outcome of the patients.