NOVOSIBIRSK, October 30. /TASS/. Scientists from Novosibirsk have developed a neural network for detecting the coronavirus infection using X-ray and computer tomography images. The network has a database of 10,000 images, head of the department of applied informatics of the Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management Sergei Tereshchenko said on Friday at a forum on urban technologies.
"Using the images, doctors need to identify whether there are some pathological changes there [in lungs - TASS]. The second issue is, if there is pneumonia, it is necessary to define the nature of this pneumonia, because the pneumonia caused by COVID is a little different from the pneumonia caused by other factors. In order to solve this task we decided to use the method of computer vision," he said.
The developer explained that the method of computer vision implies the creation of a neural network which will identify the lung damage using data-sets - the data consisting of a large number of different images of lungs. "We used the data that were in open access. First of all, there is the data of the US radiology society and some data we collected at clinical hospitals in Novosibirsk," he said, adding that the total number of images came to more than 10,000.
According to the scientist, the training of the neural network was conducted with the participation of doctors who submitted to the developers a map of signs identifying the development of the coronavirus pneumonia. The precision of measurements came to 91%. For convenience the scientists developed an open-access internet service where anyone can check his X-ray or computer tomography chest image for the presence of the coronavirus pneumonia. In the future the scientists plan to teach the neural network to recognize not only pneumonia but also other lung diseases.
According to the latest statistics, about 45 mln people have been infected worldwide and more than 1.18 mln deaths have been reported. To date, 1,599,976 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 1,200,560 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 27,656 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.