Open Access

BACKGROUND Differentiation of high-flow from low-flow vascular malformations (VMs) is crucial for therapeutic management of this orphan disease. OBJECTIVE A convolutional neural network (CNN) was evaluated for differentiation of peripheral vascular malformations (VMs) on T2-weighted short tau inversion recovery (STIR) MRI. METHODS 527 MRIs (386 low-flow and 141 high-flow VMs) were randomly divided into training, validation and test set for this single-center study. 1) Results of the CNN's diagnostic performance were compared with that of two expert and four junior radiologists. 2) The influence of CNN's prediction on the radiologists' performance and diagnostic certainty was evaluated. 3) Junior radiologists' performance after self-training was compared with that of the CNN. RESULTS Compared with the expert radiologists the CNN achieved similar accuracy (92% vs. 97%, p = 0.11), sensitivity (80% vs. 93%, p = 0.16) and specificity (97% vs. 100%, p = 0.50). In comparison to the junior radiologists, the CNN had a higher specificity and accuracy (97% vs. 80%, p <  0.001; 92% vs. 77%, p <  0.001). CNN assistance had no significant influence on their diagnostic performance and certainty. After self-training, the junior radiologists' specificity and accuracy improved and were comparable to that of the CNN. CONCLUSIONS Diagnostic performance of the CNN for differentiating high-flow from low-flow VM was comparable to that of expert radiologists. CNN did not significantly improve the simulated daily practice of junior radiologists, self-training was more effective.