Tunisian engineers have developed a coronavirus scanning tool. The technology is aided by artificial intelligence. It’s still under development but already boasts a 90% accuracy rate. Adnen Chaouachi filed this report in the capital Tunis.
Mustapha Hamdi is leading a team of Tunisian university professors and engineering students.
They’ve developed a tool to scan lung x-rays and evaluate whether patients are likely to be suffering from COVID-19
And it’s all done through a web-based platform.
Mustapha Hamdi is an associate Professor, National Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology: “We’ve uploaded to the platform, X-rays of coronavirus patients’ lungs provided by China, Italy and other countries as well as X-rays of people who tested negative. We train the platform than give it new X-rays and it can later classify and recognize coronavirus cases.”
The expert in artificial intelligence adds that the invention is being tested at various hospitals and COVID-19 centers across the North African country.
“Artificial intelligence can analyze data and many X-rays in a very short period of time. The result is instant. The cost is very cheap and the platform is not centralized, i.e. it can be used anywhere in inner regions in the country. We just need X-ray machines.”
The Minister of Industry has welcomed the considerable effort made by Tunisian inventors. Salah Ben Youssef also noted during a hearing session at the Parliamentary Commission on Industry, that the state will support all initiatives to face the coronavirus pandemic.
”Since the outbreak of the pandemic, many things have changed in Tunisia. Our researchers are very competent. The Ministry of industry is working closely with all inventors. The wave of inventions is unprecedented,” Salah Ben Youssef, Tunisian Minister of Industry said.
The new platform has been developed with the support of German development agency GIZ, the Italian Society of Medical Radiology and US tech giant IBM.
The ministry of Health and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research have approved the testing of the invention.
Thousands of X-rays of the lungs of both healthy people and Covid-19 patients have been fed into the new platform, allowing artificial intelligence to learn to recognize the marks of the virus on the lungs.
