Participants in this arm received conventional CT-guided percutaneous transthoracic lung biopsy.

Three-dimensionally printed navigational template was designed based on the CT scan images acquired before the biopsy. Under the guidance of navigational template, percutaneous transthoracic lung biopsy was conducted.

Percutaneous transthoracic lung biopsy was conducted stepwise under the real-time guidance of CT scan. This kind of modality served as an effective method for diagnosing peripheral lung lesions (all of the participants received fine-needle aspiration, some of them received coaxial needle biopsy as well, according to the pulmonologist's instruction).

A percutaneous transthoracic fine-needle aspiration procedure was considered diagnostic if a malignant or specific benign diagnosis of the lesion was made. The ratio of diagnostic cases to all the participants who received the corresponding biopsy was considered as diagnostic yield.

All biopsy results that showed lung cancer were considered true positives (TP). For participants who had a nondiagnostic (intermediate or indeterminate) result from the first lung biopsy (fine-needle aspiration), subsequent diagnostic modalities including a re-biopsy, transbronchial needle aspiration or a 12-month follow-up was conducted to determine the final diagnosis. If any of these modalities demonstrated malignant, the case was considered a false negative (FN). Diagnostic sensitivity of the fine-needle aspiration procedure for lung cancer was defined as TP / (TP + FN).