Automated Collateral Classification on CT Angiography in Acute Ischemic Stroke: Performance Trends Across Hyperparameter Combinations

Collateral status is an important therapeutic indicator for acute ischemic stroke (AIS), yet visual collateral grading remains subjective and suffers from inter-observer variability. To address this limitation, this study automatically extracted binarized vascular morphological features from CTA images and developed a convolutional neural network (CNN) for automated collateral classification. Performance trends were systematically analyzed across diverse hyperparameter combinations to meet different clinical decision needs. A total of 157 AIS patients (median age 65 [57–74] years; 61.8% were male) were retrospectively enrolled and stratified by Menon score into good (3–5, n = 117) and poor (0–2, n = 40) collateral groups. A total of 192 architectures were established, and three representative model tendencies emerged: a sensitivity-oriented model (AUC = 0.773; sensitivity = 87.18%; specificity = 65.00%), a balanced model (AUC = 0.768; sensitivity = 72.65%; specificity = 77.50%), and a specificity-oriented model (AUC = 0.753; sensitivity = 63.25%; specificity = 85.00%). These results demonstrate that kernel size, the number of filters in the first layer, and the number of convolutional layers are key determinants of performance directionality, allowing tailored model selection depending on clinical requirements. This work highlights the feasibility of CTA-based automated collateral classification and provides a systematic framework for developing models optimized for sensitivity, specificity, or balanced decision-making. The findings may serve as a reference for clinical model deployment and have potential for integration into multi-objective AI systems for endovascular thrombectomy patient triage.