An IIT-Roorkee professor, Kamal Jain, has claimed to have developed a software that can help detect COVID-19 within five seconds using an X-ray scan of the suspected patient.
The professor claims that the software will not only reduce testing costs but also reduce the risk of coronavirus exposure to the health workers. The professor teaches at IIT-Roorkee’s civil engineering department.
However, there is no official verification for the claim.
Key Highlights
• The IIT-Roorkee professor reportedly took 40 days to develop the software.
• He first analysed over 60,000 X-ray scans include those of pneumonia, tuberculosis and COVID-19 patients to differentiate between the kind of chest congestion the patient in the three diseases.
• He also analysed the chest x-ray database of US’sNIH Clinical Center.
• After analysing all these different x-ray scans, he developed an artificial intelligence-based database.
• He has approached the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for its approval and filed a patent for the same.
How will it work?
According to the professor, the doctors will be able to simply upload pictures of the suspected patient’s x-ray using the software developed by him. The software will be able to tell whether the patient shows any sign of pneumonia and whether it is due to COVID-19 or any other bacteria. It will also be able to measure the severity of the virus infection. The results will be processed within just 5 seconds.
The software is claimed to be able to analyse bilateral opacity, the pattern of fluid build-up in the lungs and nature of clump or clot if any.
Impact
The software, if it gets approval from the concerned authorities, will help in an accurate preliminary screening of people. The software can then be supplemented by clinical testing for suspected cases.
According to the professor, pneumonia caused by coronavirus is more severe than other bacteria, as it affects the complete lung area rather than a smaller portion of the lungs.
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