In the face of the COVID-19 epidemic, the National Health Commission of China has included CT features of COVID-19 as the clinical diagnosis standard for COVID-19 in Hubei Province in its official diagnosis and treatment solution released on February 4, 2020.
As one of the decision-making methods for COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment, CT powers fast and effective diagnosis and evaluation. However, due to large numbers of lesions in lungs and rapid changes, multiple rechecks and image reviews are required in a short period of time, significantly increasing the workloads of imaging doctors.
What's worse, imaging doctors who can accurately diagnose and quantitatively analyze COVID-19 are insufficient in number, so the diagnosis efficiency cannot be greatly improved. Recently, HUAWEI CLOUD worked with Huazhong University of Science & Technology and Lanwon Technology to develop and launch an AI-assisted quantitative medical image analysis service for COVID-19.
With HUAWEI CLOUD's leading AI technologies such as computer vision and medical image analysis, the service can automatically, quickly, and correctly output CT quantification results to imaging and clinical doctors, alleviating the shortage of imaging doctors who can accurately diagnose COVID-19, relieving the pressures of quarantines, and reducing the heavy workloads of doctors. The service also utilizes the powerful computing capability of Huawei Ascend series AI chips to output the quantization result of a single case in seconds. "AI + doctor review" is dozens of times faster than manual quantitative image evaluation, greatly improves the diagnosis efficiency.
HUAWEI CLOUD leverages the computer vision and medical image analysis technologies to segment the multiple pulmonary ground glass opacities (CGOs) and lung consolidation and make quantitative evaluations through CTs of patients' lungs. It combines clinical information and laboratory results to help doctors more accurately distinguish between early, advanced, and severe stages of COVID-19, facilitating early screening and prevention/control. For confirmed cases in hospitals, this AI-assist service can perform registration and quantitative analysis on the 4D dynamic data of multiple rechecks within a short period of time, helping doctors effectively evaluate patients' conditions and drug use effects.