Belgian initiative for AI lung scan analysis in fight against COVID-19 goes European

BRUSSELS (Belgium), JANUARY 26, 2021 — The Belgian initiative icovid, which supports radiologists in the assessment of CT images of the lungs of COVID-19 patients, has grown into a multi-center European project, co-funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme. Icovid was set up in March by UZ Brussel, KU Leuven, icometrix 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 centers all over Europe. With icolung, 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 from COVID-19 even more quickly, and to determine the further care path of the patient faster and better through prognostic models.”

The icovid project was launched in March 2020 as a Belgian pro bono initiative. Icometrix, which specializes in AI solutions for medical images, partnered with UZ Brussel, KU Leuven, VUB and imec to investigate how to deploy lung scans in the COVID pandemic and what AI software would be needed to do so. The AI tool icolung was born. Prof Johan de Mey, VUB-UZ Brussel: “At the time, there was insufficient testing capacity to quickly test all patients. With icolung, we wanted to use lung scans as a triage tool. By using CT and with the help of the AI analyses, we were able to trace patients with suspicious lung lesions and have them tested as a priority. During the busiest periods, everyone who entered the UZ Brussel as a patient was scanned, also as a means of preventing COVID-19 outbreaks in the hospital.”

Icolung free for all hospitals in Europe

Icolung was certified in April, is currently being used by over 75 hospitals worldwide and has analyzed over 35,000 lung CT scans. The icovid project now builds on the development of icolung and is committed to scaling up, thanks to the commitment of renowned research institutes such as King’s College London, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, University of Oxford, Maastricht University, the University of Liège and Centre Hospitalier Universitaire of Liège. The partners will also collaborate with The Medical Cloud Company to incorporate other clinical information into the models in addition to CT images. Icovid receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Thanks to this financial support, icolung can be offered free of charge to hospitals across Europe. While vaccination will eventually normalize daily life, the virus will still circulate and other coronaviruses may emerge. In local outbreaks, it will be important to identify COVID-19 patients early. 

Detection of Chronic COVID Syndrome

Icovid will continue to respond to the rapidly evolving needs of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, it is estimated that about 2% of COVID-19 patients have symptoms lasting longer than three months, called Long COVID or Chronic COVID Syndrome (CCS). With the improved software, the consortium will also better predict the long-term effects of COVID-19, which are today still largely unknown. The ability to identify patients who may develop CCS opens up possibilities for hospitals to better adapt care and share the burden.

Dr Dirk Smeets, icovid project coordinator and CTO at icometrix, said: “This project allows us to further demonstrate that AI, and medical technology in general, can add value to clinical decisions and save costs. I strongly believe that icolung will benefit from the advice, clinical expertise, and critical evaluation of the renowned academic centers in our consortium.”

Prof Dr Fergus Gleeson, chief medical officer for the National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging, head of academic radiology at Oxford University and president of the European Society of Thoracic Imaging, said: “A wide adoption of AI-based software for the analysis of chest CT images, like icolung, will help the fight against a pandemic that, unfortunately, we will have to endure for quite some time. These large-scale research collaborations with a variety of expertise are critical to responding to the evolving needs during this pandemic.”

About imec 

Imec is a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. The combination of our widely acclaimed leadership in microchip technology and profound software and ICT expertise is what makes us unique. By leveraging our world-class infrastructure and local and global ecosystem of partners across a multitude of industries, we create groundbreaking innovation in application domains such as healthcare, smart cities and mobility, logistics and manufacturing, energy and education.  

As a trusted partner for companies, start-ups and universities we bring together more than 4,000 brilliant minds from almost 100 nationalities. Imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium and has distributed R&D groups at a number of Flemish universities, in the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, and offices in China, India and Japan. In 2019, imec's revenue (P&L) totaled 640 million euro.  

Further information on imec can be found at www.imec-int.com. 

Imec is a registered trademark for the activities of IMEC International (a legal entity set up under Belgian law as a “stichting van openbaar nut”), imec Belgium (IMEC vzw supported by the Government of Flanders), imec the Netherlands (Stichting IMEC Nederland, part of Holst Centre and OnePlanet, supported by the Dutch Government), imec Taiwan (IMEC Taiwan Co.), imec China (IMEC Microelectronics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.), imec India (Imec India Private Limited) and imec Florida (IMEC USA nanoelectronics design center). 

About icometrix 

icometrix (Leuven, Belgium; Boston, USA) strives for data-driven insights and personalized patient care, supported by artificial intelligence. icometrix offers a portfolio of AI solutions to assist healthcare with various challenges; icobrain extracts data from brain MRI and CT scans for the radiological reporting and clinical management of neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, brain trauma, epilepsy, stroke, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. icompanion, a digital platform and mobile app, helps people with MS and their care team to monitor clinical symptoms and treatments efficiently and objectively. icolung addresses the COVID-19 pandemic by measuring lung involvement on chest CT. 

Today, icometrix is internationally active and integrated into more than 100 clinical practices. In addition, icometrix collaborates with healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies on the evaluation of drug research for neurological disorders. 

https://icovid.ai 

https://covid19risk.ai/

 UZ Brussel/VUB 

The radiology department of UZ Brussel-VUB contributes to the design of AI instruments, clinical tests and their large-scale deployment. 

https://www.uzbrussel.be 

ETRO, an imec research group at VUB, leads the development of AI instruments. The primary aim of the software is to automatically analyze CT images of COVID-19 lung lesions, and thereby assess the extent of the lesions and the severity of the infection, and predict the patient’s prognosis. ETRO also offers a tool to automatically determine from a scan whether a patient is infected with COVID-19. This is done on the basis of interpretable classification algorithms that allow doctors to see which parts of the lung images contain patterns that may indicate COVID-19.  

http://www.etrovub.be/