Due to the global pandemic situation, faster COVID-19 diagnosis for patients is required. Currently, there are two major methods used for the screening and identification of COVID-19: The RT-PCR and the CT scan, or Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction and Computerized Tomography, respectively. Comparing the two methods, we can find out that the sensitivity of RT-PCR is only 71%, and the accuracy of CT is 98%. As there are needs for increasing the accuracy of the diagnosis in order to prevent the virus spread, CT screening might be the best option in hospitals around the globe. Moreover, the large number of CT scans and diagnosis causes an overload on the medical systems and doctors, which create the needs for advanced assisted diagnosis.

Huawei delivers Healthcare AI solutions, integrating advanced technology in deep learning, computer vision and natural language processing which are helping to provide to healthcare institutions the clinical intelligent diagnosis and intelligent management systems for multiple departments. During the pandemic events in China, Huawei with its medical partners were able to develop an AI-assisted COVID-19 pneumonia solution. With this joint solution, doctors’ workload was reduced and simplified to speed up the process.

AI-assisted diagnosis is 6 times faster than manual operations

Doctors only need to upload CT scans of patients' chests to the AI system which analyzes the series of images of a patient within 10 to 20 seconds and provides diagnosis analysis to the doctor for a quick screen of the patients with the COVID-19 pneumonia. The procedure time was reduced by increasing the screen speed by up to six times.

AI-assisted diagnosis Powered with Huawei AI Engine Atlas 800

The Huawei AI-assisted diagnosis appliance solution for COVID-19 is powered by our advanced AI Engine Huawei Atlas 800. The Atlas 800 is a Deep Learning System that is used as inference server that supports several AI accelerator cards (Huawei Atlas 300). The AI engine integrates the COVID-19 CT screening algorithm from our solution partners and also integrates with a large number of optimized network model algorithms to help users easily use deep learning technologies in a convenient and efficient manner.

PACS & AI Engine

Online Proof of Concept (POC)

In order to demonstrate the AI diagnosis capabilities, we have an online application available which allows you to upload your own picture and shows how the tool is able to identify and evaluate CT scans for a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Please note the POC is currently only available in the following countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland