AI-based tech to help detect Covid with X-ray images

NEW DELHI: A Department of Science and Technology (DST) supported AI-based technology has come up that can check images of chest X-rays on WhatsApp to identify Covid-19 in suspected patients. This is being used to detect it at an early stage in rural India.


According to Umakant Soni, co-founder and CEO of ARTPARK (AI &Robotics Technology Park), which created ‘

XraySetu

’, the technology is easily accessible and is a WhatsApp-based screening service that enables rapid identification of suspected

Covid patients

using AI algorithms over chest X-rays. This allows doctors to identify Covid patients at an early stage and save lives.

Tested and validated with over 1,25,000

X-ray images

from the

National Institute of Health

, UK, as well as over 1,000 Indian Covid patients in 10 months, XraySetu can detect low-resolution X-ray images over WhatsApp.

"In the course of their careers, radiologists look at thousands of X-rays and identify the problems. Approximately after 5-8 years, they may see two lakh X-ray images. So, we decided to teach the AI about how to identify the lungs and if there are issues, Soni said.

He stated that the major challenge of Covid is how it affects the lungs. In this case, the patient must rely on oxygen at hospitals or ventilators. “Through X-rays, we can find that the lung is not in a great shape and hence treatment must begin. It was this idea that I, and Chiranjib Bhattacharyya from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Geeta Manjunath from

NIRAMAI Health Analytix

started working on.”

He explained that they had little data and had to come up with new techniques to look at X-ray images. "XraySetu helps rural doctors to identify Covid at an early stage and also helps them detect 14 other lung abnormalities.

Soni said that to conduct the health check, any doctor would be required to visit www.xraysetu.com and click on the ‘Try the Free XraySetu Beta’ button. They can also send X-ray images on the number 8046163838 through WhatsApp directly. The platform will then redirect the person to another page, wherein he or she can choose to engage with the WhatsApp-based chatbot via web or a smartphone application. Doctors can take a picture on their phones of the chest X-ray of a suspected patient and send to the XraySetu bot and get results in a matter of minutes.

“More than 7,500 users have tried it from all over India,” said Soni, who added that this could potentially make them the best X-ray image interpretation system in the world.