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LEUVEN, Belgium, Jan. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ The Belgian initiative icovid, which supports radiologists in the assessment of CT images of the lungs of COVID-19 patients, has grown into a multicentre European project, co-funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme. icovid was set up in March by UZ Brussel, KU Leuven, ico
metrix and ETRO, an imec research group of VUB. Professor Jef Vandemeulebroucke of ETRO: What started as a local project is now being rolled out in 800 hospitals in Europe and supported by excellent research centres all over Europe. With ico
lung, we can detect COVID-19 patients at an early stage and quantify the extent of lung lesions. Meanwhile, we are further improving the AI software to identify lung damage as COVID-19 even more quickly, and to determine the further care path of the patient faster and better through prognostic models.
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NHSX has pioneered an anonymous bank of over 40,000 scans collected over the course of the pandemic. The National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database (NCCID) collects X-Rays, CT and MRI scans to speed up diagnosis of the disease, enabling clinicians to implement treatment plans faster and more effectively as well as allowing them to predict more accurately which patients may end up in a critical condition.
Established in April 2020 with the British Society of Thoracic Imaging (BSTI), Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust and AI specialists Faculty, the NCCID provides a more comprehensive understanding of COVID-19, collating data from 20 NHS trusts across the country to detect disease patterns and markers of the virus, which, in turn, enable more accurate early diagnoses and prognoses and inform new treatments. This information, which is stripped of any patient identifying information, is also used to inform algorithms used in hospitals and universities to treat and monitor patient
When it comes to Covid, our lungs are ‘ground zero’. They are one of the primary routes the virus uses to get into the body. But early on in the pandemic, chest X-ray scans revealed something else: where the images should be black, indicating healthy air-filled tissue, in many cases there was a white mist described as resembling ‘ground glass’.
It’s the telltale sign of pneumonitis – inflamed lungs as a result of the body’s immune response to the virus. But in the case of Covid, the damage often seems to be far worse and more extensive than with similar illnesses such as flu.
Increased speed and accuracy in diagnosis can lead to early medical intervention and save lives
NHSX, a unit tasked with driving the digital transformation of care in the NHS, has brought together over 40,000 CT scans, MRIs and X-rays from more than 10,000 patients across the UK during the course of the pandemic.
Access to this National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database (NCCID) has now been extended to hospitals and universities across the country who are using the images to track patterns and markers of illness. The database can speed up diagnosis of COVID-19, leading to a quick treatment plan and greater understanding of whether the patient may end up in a critical condition.