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Coronavirus: Chinese team uses AI and CAT scans to try to detect Covid-19 earlier
- Team led by top infectious disease expert Li Lanjuan says tool is more than 86 per cent accurate in classifying cases
- Technology aims pick up pathogen that can be missed in swab tests
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Chinese scientists have developed an AI tool to read CAT scans and find Covid-19 cases missed by swab tests, potentially leading to earlier detection of the disease.
The team, based in the eastern province of Zhejiang and led by prominent infectious disease expert Li Lanjuan, said the tool could determine from a CAT scan with more than 86 per cent accuracy whether a patient had Covid-19, influenza A viral pneumonia or neither condition.
The researchers said this was important because in the early stages of Covid-19, patients might have signs of the disease in their lungs but test negative to nose and throat swabs.
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“These patients are not diagnosed as suspected or confirmed cases. Thus, they are not isolated or treated in a timely manner, making them potential sources of infection,” the team said in a peer-reviewed paper released on the website of academic publisher Elsevier late last month.
Li was among the specialists sent to Wuhan in central China with Zhong Nanshan, the country’s top respiratory expert, in January and played a key role in the government’s decision to lock down the city. She spent months in Wuhan, heading up a team treating patients during the city’s epidemic.
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The researchers said they used 528 CT sample scans as the basis for the tool. In all, 189 samples of the scans were from patients with Covid-19, 194 had influenza A viral pneumonia and 145 samples were from healthy people.
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