Researchers Find Untapped Potential for AI-Enhanced Chest X-Ray Imaging in COVID-19 Diagnosis

Researchers have suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) should be used to expand the role of chest X-ray imaging — using computed tomography (CT) — in diagnosing and assessing coronavirus infection so that it can be more than just a means of screening for signs of COVID-19 in a patient’s lungs.

Although CT chest imaging is not currently a routine method for diagnosing COVID-19 in patients, it has been helpful in excluding other possible causes for COVID-like symptoms, confirming a diagnosis made by another means or providing critical data for monitoring a patient’s progress in severe cases of the disease. However, based on their study, researchers at the John Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD, USA) believe that this isn’t enough, making the case that there is “an untapped potential” for AI-enhanced imaging to improve. According to the researchers, “AI’s power to generate models from large volumes of information — fusing molecular, clinical, epidemiological and imaging data — may accelerate solutions to detect, contain and treat COVID-19.”

The Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have suggested that AI can be used for risk stratification, the process of categorizing patients for the type of care they receive based on the predicted course of their COVID-19 infection. The technology can also be used for treatment monitoring to define the effectiveness of agents used to combat the disease, as well as for modeling how COVID-19 behaves, so that novel, customized therapies can be developed, tested and deployed. The researchers have proposed that “AI may help identify the immunological markers most associated with poor clinical course, which may yield new targets” for drugs that will direct the immune system against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

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