Project Summary
COVID-19 has been declared as pandemic disease by the World Health Organization (WHO) to define global health crisis due to its worldwide spread. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a new virus that has not been previously identified. The disease causes respiratory illness with symptoms such as cough, fever, and in more severe cases, difficulty in breathing. The chest computed tomography (CT) is a faster and easier approach to identify COVID-19 in clinical practices. The fast and accurate detection of the COVID-19 infection is essential to identify, take better decisions and ensure treatment for the patients which will help save their lives. In the ongoing process, radiological imaging is also preferred where chest X-rays are highlighted in the diagnosis of COVID19.
Medical imaging such as X-ray and computed tomography (CT) plays an essential role in the global fight against COVID-19, whereas the recently emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies further strengthen the power of the imaging tools and help medical specialists. Both of which are widely used in the frontline hospitals, in order to depict the latest progress of medical imaging and radiology fighting against COVID-19.
As the rate of newly affected global regions is increasing every day, and the number of new patients is increasing worldwide, development of decision making tool as Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems that incorporate X-ray and CT image processing techniques and deep learning algorithms could assist physicians as diagnostic aides for COVID-19 and help provide a better understanding of the progression of the disease.
Due to fast acquisition, X-ray and CT scans are widely performed to provide evidence for radiologists. However, medical images, especially chest CT, contain hundreds of slices, which takes a long time for the specialists to diagnose, and sometimes it happens that some details are omitted when fatigue occurs. In the current situation, optimizing the time reaction, the accuracy of results in order to rely on and the number of health care workers that are involved and their effort are the only tools that can slow/stop the crisis.
Therefore, an online CAD platform will be beneficial for doctors as a second opinion which provides the accuracy of the images in a shorter period of time and in such way the doctors would be able to check many more pacients. Also for the pacients it would be possible to be taken into care in an earlier stage of the infection and moreover maybe to avoid an fighting death situation.
As a new disease, COVID-19 has similar manifestations with various other types of pneumonia, which requires an experienced radiologist for achieving a high diagnostic performance.
We particularly focus on the integration of an online platform for doctors based on available open AI solutions with X-ray and CT as a method to support/improve the rapidity and accuracy of a diagnostic for COVID-19.
Project Objectives
- Development of an online platform in order to assist and support the doctors to diagnose the patients with COVID19 based on available AI solutions which analyze CT and X-Ray images for 3 months.
- Promoting the developed solution for doctors both locally and internationally.
Project Demonstration
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