An artificial intelligence deep learning platform achieves high diagnostic accuracy for Covid-19 pneumonia by reading chest X-ray images

Abstract

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (Covid-19) causes deadly lung infections (pneumonia). Accurate clinical diagnosis of Covid-19 is essential for guiding treatment. Covid-19 RNA test does not reflect clinical features and severity of the disease. Pneumonia in Covid-19 patients could be caused by non-Covid-19 organisms and distinguishing Covid-19 pneumonia from non-Covid-19 pneumonia is critical. Chest X-ray detects pneumonia, but a high diagnostic accuracy is difficult to achieve. We develop an artificial intelligence-based (AI) deep learning method with a high diagnostic accuracy for Covid-19 pneumonia. We analyzed 10,182 chest X-ray images of healthy individuals, bacterial pneumonia. and viral pneumonia (Covid-19 and non-Covid-19) to build and test AI models. Among viral pneumonia, diagnostic accuracy for Covid-19 reaches 99.95%. High diagnostic accuracy is also achieved for distinguishing Covid-19 pneumonia from bacterial pneumonia (99.85% accuracy) or normal lung images (100% accuracy). Our AI models are accurate for clinical diagnosis of Covid-19 pneumonia by reading solely chest X-ray images.