Fujitsu and Tokyo Shinagawa Hospital to develop AI for COVID-19 pneumonia diagnosis | ZDNet


Image: Fujitsu

Fujitsu and Tokyo Shinagawa Hospital have announced a partnership to jointly develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can be used to help with early detection of COVID-19 pneumonia, even in cases where the possibility of infection is determined as low during initial examinations.  

The AI technology will be designed specifically to help examine chest CT scans, which are considered as an effective method for diagnosing novel coronavirus pneumonia, even when COVID-19 test results are negative, Fujitsu said.

According to the Japanese tech giant, data collected from past CT scans of COVID-19 pneumonia patients from Tokyo Shinagawa Hospital will be used to train the AI technology to detect abnormal shadow 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,” the company said.

Applying AI to the analysis can help automate a process, according to Fujitsu, that normally requires doctors to visually check hundreds of chest CT images per patient 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,” Fujitsu said. 

Fujitsu said the ultimate outcome for the R&D project is to commercialise the technology.

“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,” the company said.

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