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Source: https://www.wired.com/story/chinese-hospitals-deploy-ai-help-diagnose-covid-19/
Chinese Hospitals Deploy AI to Help Diagnose Covid-19
Software that reads CT lung scans had primarily been used to detect cancer. Now, it's been retooled to look for signs of pneumonia caused by coronavirus.
02.26.2020 07:00 AM
Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, is at the heart of the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that has shut down cities in China, South Korea, Iran, and Italy. That’s forced the hospital to become a testbed for how quickly a modern medical center can adapt to a new infectious disease epidemic.
One experiment is underway in Zhongnan’s radiology department, where staff are using artificial intelligence software to detect visual signs of the pneumonia associated with Covid-19 on lung CT scan images.
Haibo Xu, professor and chair of radiology at Zhongnan Hospital, says the software helps overworked staff screen patients and prioritize those most likely to have Covid-19 for further examination and testing. He emailed WIRED an audio file of himself answering a reporter’s questions about the project and answered other questions by email.
Detecting pneumonia on a scan doesn’t alone confirm a person has the disease, but Xu says doing so helps staff diagnose, isolate, and treat patients more quickly. The software “can identify typical signs or partial signs of Covid-19 pneumonia,” he wrote in an email. Doctors can then follow up with other examinations and lab tests to confirm a diagnosis of the disease. Xu says his department was quickly overwhelmed as the virus spread through Wuhan in January....
Chinese Hospitals Deploy AI to Help Diagnose Covid-19
Software that reads CT lung scans had primarily been used to detect cancer. Now, it's been retooled to look for signs of pneumonia caused by coronavirus.
02.26.2020 07:00 AM
Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, is at the heart of the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that has shut down cities in China, South Korea, Iran, and Italy. That’s forced the hospital to become a testbed for how quickly a modern medical center can adapt to a new infectious disease epidemic.
One experiment is underway in Zhongnan’s radiology department, where staff are using artificial intelligence software to detect visual signs of the pneumonia associated with Covid-19 on lung CT scan images.
Haibo Xu, professor and chair of radiology at Zhongnan Hospital, says the software helps overworked staff screen patients and prioritize those most likely to have Covid-19 for further examination and testing. He emailed WIRED an audio file of himself answering a reporter’s questions about the project and answered other questions by email.
Detecting pneumonia on a scan doesn’t alone confirm a person has the disease, but Xu says doing so helps staff diagnose, isolate, and treat patients more quickly. The software “can identify typical signs or partial signs of Covid-19 pneumonia,” he wrote in an email. Doctors can then follow up with other examinations and lab tests to confirm a diagnosis of the disease. Xu says his department was quickly overwhelmed as the virus spread through Wuhan in January....
