IIT professor develops AI-based software to detect COVID-19 by comparing lung X-rays

An IIT-Roorkee professor claims to are suffering from software that can detect COVID-19 comparing X-rays of a probable patient’s lungs with a large number of such scans of confirmed cases.

Kamal Jain, a professor at IIT-Roorkee’s civil engineering department, said the program might help in accurate preliminary screening which can be supplemented by clinical testing.

“I first developed an artificial intelligence-based database after analysing over 60,000 X-ray scans, including those of COVID-19, pneumonia and tuberculosis patients to differentiate between your sort of chest congestion suffered in the three diseases. I also analysed the chest x-ray database of the United States’ NIH Clinical Center,” Jain told PTI.

“Using the software I developed, doctors can simply upload pictures of an individual’s X-ray. The program can not only classify whether the patient has any sign of pneumonia, it will be able to tell whether it is because of COVID-19 or (other virus) and in addition measure severity of the infection. The results could be processed within five seconds” he added.

The professor, who developed the software in about 40 days, has filed a patent and has approached the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for an assessment.

So far, there is absolutely no verification of his claim by a medical institution.

“The pneumonia due to COVID-19 is more severe than other (viruses) since it affects lungs completely rather than small portions of the lungs in other cases. The program will analyse bilateral opacity, pattern of fluid build-up in lungs and nature of clump or clot if any,” the professor said.

“Similar kinds of experiments are being conducted by the University of Amazon in america but there's not been a breakthrough yet,” he claimed.