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AI can detect coronavirus from CT scans in twenty seconds
- chrisa 7y agoAs the first comment there points out, a 96% accuracy doesn't mean much without knowing the false positive and false negative rates. I have no doubt that this is good work in the right direction - but the headline alone doesn't make it a home run.
- vikramkr 7y agoI suppose in a case where like half the population had the virus those might factor less. And if the errors skew towards false positives, it could be a quick prescreen to get an enriched pool of candidates for manual checking. Definitely not a panacea yet though
- mike_n 7y agoDo human doctors have a better rate? And at what cost/throughput?
- jupp0r 7y agoThis is the base rate fallacy. return “healthy”; would have a 99.9% accuracy right now.
- droidist2 7y agoAhh, you need to use ROC AUC or something.
- contravariant 7y agoROC AUC is somewhat meaningless when basically any amount of false positives is going to massively decrease the utility of the test.
- yellow_lead 7y agoI think you have a good idea for an AI startup here.
- smacktoward 7y agoFor bonus points, have it return one out of every 1000 or so requests with "not hot dog."
- duxup 7y agoIsn't a CT scan kind of an ordeal to do?
- DigitalVerse 7y agoAgreed... seems like the bottleneck is the cost and time to run the CT scan, not to have a doctor look at the results.
- tguvot 7y agoin china they were running partial ct scans: 5min per patient. Usually it's 30+
- riahi 7y agoSorry, modern CT scans are < 20 seconds. The really great scanners are 10 seconds.
- tguvot 7y agohad a couple of CT myself. Usually it's minutes of active scanning. But all the preparations/calibrations/whatever is done - you stay in machine at least half an hour+. They cut it down to 5.
- ska 7y agoworkflow times are far from what is technically possible, for a host of reasons.
- lostlogin 7y agoIf a C- chest CT is taking 30+ minutes, something isn’t right. A standard workflow might have them every 30 minutes to allows extra bookings to be plugged in where needed, without ruining the rest of the day. Or at least that’s the workflow in the places I’ve worked.
- riahi 7y ago
- adrianmonk 7y agoSpeaking of AI and coronavirus detection, some Chinese tech companies (Megvii, Baidu, SenseTime) have apparently built systems to detect fever with thermal imaging cameras and AI. https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3049215/ai-firms-deploy-fever-detection-systems-beijing-help-fight-coronavirus https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3049215/ai-firms-de... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51717164 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51717164 Seems like something that could be useful anywhere. Ideally, people would self-regulate (go to the doctor, isolate themselves, etc.), but in practice extra layers of protection seem smart. People may not immediately realize they're sick, they might go out anyway, etc. This seems to, in China's case, tie in with facial recognition they already do (which has privacy implications), but there's no reason the rest of the world would have to approach it that way.
- MaxBarraclough 7y agoIt's possible to have the virus without showing significant symptoms, isn't it? Either because you just recently caught it, or because you happen to be lucky enough to have only minimal symptoms. Doesn't that undermine temperature-based detection?
- adrianmonk 7y agoYeah, for sure it can't be 100% effective. I suppose what really matters is out of all the infected (or more precisely, contagious) people, what percentage of them have a fever. If it's 10%, then it's not worth doing. If it's even 50%, then maybe it could make a significant difference. Fever is one of the three main symptoms (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/symptoms.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/symptoms.htm...), so it seems like it has to at least be a significant percentage. But just how high a percentage, I don't know.
- justicezyx 7y agoYou can only do that in China. The sheer amount of privacy-infringing data set is impossible in the US.
- 7y ago
- hprotagonist 7y agoaccuracy don't mean shit. give me precision and recall too or you're just picking numbers.
- DerSaidin 7y agoCT scan room and machine is going to need a lot of cleaning.
- mattkrause 7y agoI've read that that's the real bottleneck--you need to clean the bejesus out of the machine if you don't want it becoming part of the problem. The actual scanning itself only takes a moment. We do head ones and they're surprisingly fast once everything's ready to go.
- Gibbon1 7y agoI saw a summary of China's efforts, supposedly before they had enough testing available they were at one point running 300-400 patients a day through each CT machine in Wuhan. That's one every 4 minutes.
- mattkrause 7y agoDo you know if they did anything clever to keep the scanners clean? I wonder if you could somehow isolate the patient rather than deep-clean the machine (ours has some exposed moving parts, which would make that time-consuming, but perhaps the non-research ones are better designed).
- Gibbon1 7y ago> isolate the patient That's what I would do. Someone else that claims to be a radiology tech said you just need to wipe the machine down for SARS since it's spread by droplets and fluids.
- rediguanayum 7y agoIANAD but just keep in mind that CT scans isn't specific Covid-19, rather that it detects telltale damage done by the virus but also could be done by other respiratory viral disease. Only in places where Covid-19 is widespread, one might assume a positive test result indicates Covid-19 in the patient.
- Engineering-MD 7y agoIt shows an atypical pneumonia. I believe this appearance in combination with a lack of cultures for other pathogens which do this was how Covid was first suspected in China in December.
- LordHumungous 7y agoA radiologist can do it in about the same time. It presents as "ground glass opacities" which are pretty easy to spot.
- avip 7y agoSpoiler: "X can do Y" is not the same as "random dude on LI says random company says X can do Y given Z without providing any relevant numbers"
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- doctoring 7y agoSo many things. "It takes doctors around 20 mins to do the same" is patently false. I would say a full review and dictation of a chest CT by a trained radiologist takes... 10 minutes? 20 if really complicated (metastatic cancer). But for the radiologist to decide whether or not there were findings compatible with COVID-19 (i.e. what this algorithm is performing) would probably take seconds. In fact, you could probably train almost any adult (and probably most children!) to distinguish between "possibly COVID" and "no COVID" lung CTs very quickly. However, as pointed out elsewhere, the presence of these findings (such as what we call "ground glass opacities" -- which is just a fancy/weird way to describe areas that are slightly less transparent than normal lung but not quite opaque) is not specific at all. They can be caused by COVID-19 or any number of other viral or fungal lung infections, as well as by reactions to drugs, hemorrhage or edema in the lungs, and so on. A positive CT would almost certainly require a confirmatory COVID-19 test. A negative CT scan in a patient with symptoms... would still demand a COVID-19 test, because findings in the lungs often lag behind the infection. So CT doesn't change your decision-making in the screening process. And they are time-consuming, costly, and harmful (they use radiation!). Their utility in caring for COVID-19 patients is probably to assess severity of disease, monitor response, and to rule out additional pathologies in the lungs. (Not to say AI couldn't help with those!)
- _bxg1 7y agoIt also doesn't sound like it even lowers the bar for getting a diagnosis, even with all these caveats. You'd still need a CT scan, in a world where many can't even get a respirator. I'd be more interested in a model that tries to give a preliminary diagnosis (positive or negative) based on data a patient already has with them or can get at home. An image of their throat, audio of their cough, maybe a time sequence of thermometer readings. If we could self-diagnose (or at least rule out some cases) using a smartphone, that would truly change the game.
- jcampbell1 7y ago> And they are time-consuming, costly, and harmful (they use radiation!) To put things in perspective, I got a CT in China, and the imaging took less than 5 minutes, and cost $35 (just the machine, not reading). The radiation is less than the increased radiation than taking a flight to China. While your perspective is probably accurate for the US, if you step back and think, it is no more complicated than getting grade school photos.
- riahi 7y agoCan it differentiate between all the various types of atypical infection? Because the findings of COVID are nonspecific viral pneumonia, which could literally be any atypical infectious/inflammatory process. CT only has great sensitivity; it has terrible specificity. Anyone have the paper?
- Gonzih 7y agoI think this is the case when false positives and false negatives can do a lot of harm, so in human review of CT scan is a must. Especially if we consider how small dataset this model is trained on.
- scythe 7y agoThis is cool, but as a medical physics student, it has been repeatedly emphasized to me that CT scans are extremely dangerous and usually considered the "imaging of last resort" when no other method is appropriate. The risk of cancer from a single CT scan can vary from 0.01%-0.4%, bringing it near the risk of death from COVID-19: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4635397/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4635397/ > An estimated 1 in 270 women who underwent a coronary angiography CT at age 40 will develop cancer from that CT (1 in 600 men), compared with an estimated 1 in 8,100 women who had routine head CT at the same age (1 in 11, 080 men). CT scans might just be the worst possible way to detect the coronavirus.
- dontreact 7y agoCT will not play a role in the diagnosis of Coronavirus in the US now that both the ACR and Society of Thiracic radiologists have come out not recommending it for first line diagnosis. This is a complex decision involving the availability of other tests, the potential for spread via contamination of CT, the need for CT for other things and the limited availability of scanners. There is a group that will open source a great dataset first this sometime soon, as it might be useful in other countries.
- m0zg 7y ago2 weeks from now when just the _known_ infections number in tens of thousands the opinion of "Society of Thoracic Radiologists" will matter very little.
- dontreact 7y agoNope, 2 weeks later and CT still not being used for screening covid
- ztratar 7y agoWhy is this, even though it was so prevalent in China as a key signal for testing?
- dontreact 7y agoI agree that it’s surprising. Medical establishment in the US is much more conservative.
- luckylittle 7y agoGithub, or it didn't happen
- m3kw9 7y agoOnly if you are way past symptomatic and have bilateral pneumonia. The CT scan wait time is extra.
- westurner 7y agoIs it possible to detect coronavirus with NIRS (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-infrared_spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-infrared_spectroscopy FWIU, the equipment costs and scan times are lower with NIRS than with CT or MRI? And infrared is zero rads? (Edit) I think it was this or the TED video that had the sweet demo: "The Science of Visible Thought & Our Translucent Selves | Mary Lou Jepsen | SU Global Summit" https://youtu.be/IRCXNBzfeC4 https://youtu.be/IRCXNBzfeC4 Are these devices in production?
- blackrock 7y agoProps to these China AI scientists! Even more impressive is that they were able to develop it in about 6-7 weeks after the initial containment effort. This is a win for AI, as a massive pattern recognition machine, to help reduce the labor load of critical personnel, like radiologists. It helps by removing them as the limiting factor, that would slow down a critical process.
- esjeon 7y agoThe thing is that, not all COVID-19 patients will suffer viral pneumonia, and lung damages are only visible in later stages of infection, when you would not need a doctor to realize you're infected. What's the point of this? EDIT: Hmm, so it seems like CT is more accurate than current test kits, which reportedly result in many false negatives. Yet, I found that other AI companies had already made their own models, with 90 ~ 97.6% accuracy[1]. [1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.biotimes.co.kr%2Fnews%2FarticleView.html%3Fidxno%3D3154 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...
- bradleybuda 7y agoA good heuristic is, don’t get your medical news from LinkedIn. Doubly-so if the word “AI” appears in the headline.
- krak12 7y agoThis AI can also detect burial fields outside of Wuhan?
- lowdose 7y agoWould be awesome if radiology finally gets disrupted. 50% of hospital bills can be attributed to the radiology department thus scalable innovation will result in a more affordable healthcare service all round.
- agoodthrowaway 7y agoIt would be good but not sure that radiologists are the dominant cost. Radiological equipment is heavily regulated because it can cause significant harm to people if the equipment malfunctions.
- manicdee 7y agoIs this actually detecting COVID-19 or yellow rulers? https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/4/15/notes-on-ai-bias https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/4/15/notes-on-a...
- anderson123 7y agoIs there a possible way to identify COVID-19 without a Chest CT scan? For those infected, a Chest CT is an added burden, and for those not infected, it would be unnecessary effects of radiation. However, the use of AI to identify COVID-19 within 20 seconds is a good way to use technology during a crisis. We offer awareness and CT Chest scans at https://www.andersondiagnostics.com/ https://www.andersondiagnostics.com/ for added safety.