Two Pakistani students have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to help diagnose coronavirus amid the shortage of test kits as the government ramps up efforts to combat the virus.

“As the virus is still growing exponentially and our hospitals are already overwhelmed, we decided to turn to artificial intelligence to help promptly identify cases in the absence of testing kits”, said, Mohammad Aleem, a mechanical engineering student who is working on the project.

Rahul Raj

As the doctors are on the front-line in the battle against the virus and the government is rushing to provide medical supplies, Aleem and his colleague, Rahul Raj, both final year students at Gulam Ishaq Khan Institute (GIKI), turned to technology to help Pakistan fight coronavirus.

“The AI-powered deep learning model that we have developed from scratch can help detect COVID-19 with 92 per cent confidence using computed tomography (CT) scan of lungs” Aleem, 22, told Gulf News.

How does the AI detector help identify patients?

The AI identifier may offer an elective method to help analyze coronavirus patients in the midst of the lack of testing packs and the inaccessibility of clinical staff. "The finder depends on the chest CT imaging. On the off chance that the CT checks are accessible, at that point it would barely take 10-20 seconds to play out the investigation and see whether the patient is COVID-19 positive," clarifies Raj, a software engineering understudy. The identifier enables spare to time as well as diminishes the commitment of specialists, for example, a radiologist. 

The programmed examination can help distinguish two things. "One it can affirm with 92 percent certainty if the individual has tried positive or negative for novel coronavirus. Also, in view of clinical symbolism, it can help find the specific position, effect and seriousness of the harm to the lungs," Raj revealed to Gulf News. The point is to assist specialists with diagnosing quicker so patients can be coordinated to the following procedure, (for example, isolate or detachment) without going through hours and representing the danger of cross-disease. 

Since the identifier depends on clinical symbolism, the significant constraints would be the expense of CT checks in Pakistan, which is around Rs5,000-8000, just as the unavailability of the symptomatic hardware.

Who are the two young developers?

Mohammad Aleem, a final-year mechanical engineering student at GIKI, is a firm believer that Industry 4.0 will revolutionise the world and this is what motivated him to learn AI. Given his diverse skill set, he is an expert in doing crossover projects merging knowledge from various disciplines. He has experience in working on smart cars, AI assistants, robotic surgery and AI-enabled medical research.