Classification of High-Resolution Computed Tomography Manifestations for COVID-19 Patients: A Systematic Review

The early detection of COVID-19 is of paramount importance for the disease treatment and control. As real-time reversetranscription polymerase chain reaction indicates a low sensitivity, the computed tomography of patients’ chest can play an effective role in the diagnosis of COVID-19, particularly for patients with false-negative RT-PCR tests. It is also effective in monitoring the clinical trends and assessing the severity of the disease.

Accordingly, this study aimed to review the different manifestations of the COVID-19 infections in high-resolution computed tomography images of patients’ chests and analyze the distribution of the disease in the lungs. The results can contribute to providing a comprehensive and concise reference on the appearance of various types of involvement and lung lesions and the extent of these lesions in the COVID-19 patients. Data Sources: We systematically searched four major indexing databases (namely PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and Cochrane Central) for articles published by May 2021 using the following keywords: High-Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT), COVID-19, and Manifestations.

Overall, 29 studies addressing the role of HRCT in detecting and evaluating the manifestations of the COVID-19 infection in patients’ lungs as ground glass opacification (GGO), consolidation, irregular solid nodules, fibrous stripes, crazy paving pattern, air bronchogram sign, etc. were reviewed.

GGO was the most common finding, as reported in 96.6% of the reviewed articles, followed by consolidations (65.5%) and irregular solid nodules (55.2%). Most patients revealed the disease process as a bilateral distribution in the peripheral areas of the lung.