EngineeringMedicine

Nanxin Feng, Siyuan Xie, Litian Fan, Zhu Chen, Qi-lin Liu

2026.3.30Zhongguo yi liao qi xie za zhi = Chinese journal of medical instrumentation

DOI: 10.12455/j.issn.1671-7104.250760

Abstract

This study aims to propose and validate a method for predicting the lifecycle stage of CT X-ray tubes using short-term equipment operational data. Detailed operational logs of five CT scanners over a three-month period, along with long-term tube replacement records, were collected from a large tertiary A-grade hospital. The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis method and log-rank test were employed to screen for the optimal lifespan metric. Combined with thermal reaction equations, 15 features quantifying workload were extracted. The lifespan prediction problem was transformed into a four-stage classification task, which was trained and evaluated using six machine learning models. Total scan volume and total exposure seconds reflected the tube degradation process more effectively than calendar days. The Random Forest (RandomForest) model achieved the best predictive performance, with a 5-fold cross-validation accuracy of 89.2% and an F1-score of 0.892. Feature importance analysis confirmed that indicators of cumulative energy consumption and usage intensity were highly correlated with the tube's lifecycle stage, a pattern consistent with physical degradation laws. Utilizing short-term operational data combined with machine learning models allows for high-precision prediction of the lifecycle stage of CT X-ray tubes. This method provides a reliable decision-support tool for healthcare institutions to implement low-cost and efficient predictive maintenance.

Citation format

FENG, Nanxin, et al. [Research on CT x-ray tube life cycle stage prediction based on operational data]. Zhongguo yi liao qi xie za zhi = Chinese journal of medical instrumentation, 2026, 50 2(2): 201–206.