The Bracco Group in Dubai with a Workshop on predictive medicine and intelligent imaging
On the occasion of the "Health & Wellness Week" at Expo 2020 Dubai, the Bracco Group has organized the workshop "Intelligent Imaging: Beyond the Future and Back to Mind" with the participation of an exceptional expert: professor Charles Kahn, Vice Chair of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania and editor of Radiology: Artificial Intelligence, who told "Artificial intelligence can help add value to diagnostic radiology throughout the consultation process. AI can help select the most appropriate exam, optimize the way the exam is performed, and improve image quality. Radiologists can apply AI systems to detect abnormalities, formulate a diagnosis, and provide recommendations for follow up".
Fabio Tedoldi, Bracco Imaging Head of Global Research & Development, stated: "In radiology, artificial intelligence has a huge potential, it allows radiologists to save time which is particularly useful given the large amount of examination requests and to extract even more information from images to make better diagnoses".
The meeting was also attended by Lorenzo Preda, Full Professor of Radiology at the University of Pavia and Head of the Radiology Division at the IRCCS Fondazione Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia, Marco Alì, Research Operation Manager Consultant at CDI Centro Diagnostico Italiano and Scientific Advisor for Bracco Imaging, Giovanni Valbusa, Imaging software and AI Bracco R &D Manager, Isabella Castiglioni, Full Professor in medical physics and machine learning at the University of Milan-Bicocca and co-founder and Honorary President of the startup DeepTrace Technology and Sergio Papa Director of Diagnostic Imaging at the Centro Diagnostico Italiano.
The workshop also illustrated AIforCOVID, the not-for-profit multicenter research project conducted by Bracco Imaging and the Centro Diagnostico Italiano (Italian Diagnostics Center), the healthcare facility of the Group led by Diana Bracco. The aim of the project is to predict the clinical evolution of COVID-19, using the AI-for-COVID Imaging Archive, which already contains thousands of radiology investigations and is available to the entire international scientific community.
Based on artificial intelligence applied to diagnostic imaging, the project is providing physicians and healthcare professionals with a database of radiographic images of Covid patients. These images are useful to understand the future progression of the disease in patients with COVID-19, for personalized and prompter therapies. The data is analyzed using algorithms developed in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa and the Università Campus Bio-medico in Rome. Since the outset, the AI-for-COVID Imaging Archive (aiforcovid.radiomica.it) has been cooperating with major public and private clinical and research centers such as: the research hospital foundations Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico (Milan) and Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo (Pavia); the Careggi University Hospital (Florence); the local social and healthcare authorities ASST Santi Paolo e Carlo (Milan), ASST Fatebenefratelli-Sacco (Milan), ASST Ospedale San Gerardo (Monza); and the Ospedale Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza hospital (San Giovanni Rotondo).
"Radiological imaging is playing a crucial role in the diagnosis of COVID-19 patients and in determining therapeutic options," explained Sergio Papa. "Together, radiomics and genomics represent a new frontier of personalized medicine and have enabled us to make a concrete contribution in practice in the fight against the horrors of the ongoing pandemic. The benefits of our AI-for-COVID project include further impetus to the development of studies on Covid-induced conditions, in particular the damage caused to the lungs, and the implementation of measures aimed at protecting individuals who are more susceptible to severe disease as a result of previous comorbidities."
"Today, artificial intelligence algorithms," Isabella Castiglioni explained, "are able to extract large numbers of quantitative features from medical images, often invisible to the naked eye, and associate them with clinical data to inform physicians about diagnosis, prognosis and response to treatments. However, these tools are mostly developed as research tools, and the transition to become medical devices, required to bring them to the patient, is for all intents and purposes a complex challenge. From design to development, and manufacturing, artificial intelligence medical software must undertake a regulatory compliance path similar to that of a drug today." "The Italian Diagnostic Center, in collaboration with the startup DeepTrace Technologies, a spin off of the University School of Pavia - specified Professor Castiglioni - has accomplished this important step and can now tell about its experience related to the "memory clinic", a path of personalized predictive medicine of neurodegenerative diseases that assists the neurologist with the informed decision of a CE marked artificial intelligence medical device."