Doctors use AI to fight pandemic in Brazil

SAO PAULO: Doctors in Brazil, the country with the second-highest number of cases and deaths in the coronavirus pandemic, have a new tool in their fight against Covid-19: Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect infections.

Under-testing remains a huge problem in the sprawling South American country but AI is helping fill the gap, thanks to a system called RadVid-19 developed using algorithms by German company Siemens and China firm Huawei.

Brazil has been hit harder by the pandemic than any country except the United States.

Experts said the numbers would be much higher if there were more widespread testing.

RadVid-19 seeks to fill that gap and help doctors decide the right course of treatment for patients.

It analyses chest X-rays and CT scans to find spots on patients’ lungs that are likely markers of infection by the coronavirus.

“The software identifies those areas and estimates the probability of a case,” said Marcio Sawamura, deputy head of the radiology centre at the University of Sao Paulo Clinical Hospital.

The programme showed doctors on a computer screen how patients’ lungs are changing over time and enables them to analyse the white and yellow circles marking potential infection.

The software is being used by 43 Brazilian hospitals, 60% of them public, thanks in part to funding from the Inter-American Development Bank.

It is not a replacement for a lab-based diagnosis by a physician. But it can help doctors decide what treatment to pursue during the long wait for lab results to come back, in a country where no large-scale testing has been done. – AFP