Fujitsu and Tokyo Shinagawa Hospital announced that they are jointly developing an artificial intelligence system that can assist in the early detection of COVID-19 pneumonia. This technology will work even when the possibility of infection is determined as ‘low’ during the initial examination. This AI technology is being designed to provide help in examining chest CT scans, specificly. Chest scans are widely accepted as an effective in diagnosing novel coronavirus. This applies even if the patient tests negative for the coronavius.
Fujitsu explained that the data collected from CT scans of COVID-19 pneumonia patients will be used to train the AI technology to detect unusual patterns in the lungs.
When diagnosing COVID-19 pneumonia, patterns of abnormal opacities in the lungs, as well as the spread of shadows across the entire lung is important information
Fujitsu
Using AI will automate a process that doctors usually have to spend a lot of time pouring over images of the CT scans to understand the characteristics of the lung.
A growing demand for technologies that reduce the burden on doctors and support speedy decision-making has accompanied the spread of the COVID-19 virus. It is also important to identify novel coronavirus pneumonia from a CT scan of the patient’s chest if there is a low likelihood of a novel coronavirus infection during the examination and PCR testing is not performed.
By linking it with electronic medical record information, the goal is to support diagnosis by doctors based on chest CT images, while also expanding the application area of this technology.
