An AI-based novel system for predicting respiratory support in COVID-19 patients through CT imaging analysis
Ibrahim Shawky Farahat, Ahmed Sharafeldeen, Mohammed Ghazal, Norah Saleh Alghamdi, Ali Mahmoud, James Connelly, Eric Van Bogaert, Huma Zia, Tania Tahtouh, Waleed Aladrousy, Ahmed Elsaid Tolba, Samir Elmougy, Ayman El‐Baz
Abstract
The proposed AI-based diagnostic system aims to predict the respiratory support required for COVID-19 patients by analyzing the correlation between COVID-19 lesions and the level of respiratory support provided to the patients. Computed tomography (CT) imaging will be used to analyze the three levels of respiratory support received by the patient: Level 0 (minimum support), Level 1 (non-invasive support such as soft oxygen), and Level 2 (invasive support such as mechanical ventilation). The system will begin by segmenting the COVID-19 lesions from the CT images and creating an appearance model for each lesion using a 2D, rotation-invariant, Markov-Gibbs random field (MGRF) model. Three MGRF-based models will be created, one for each level of respiratory support. This suggests that the system will be able to differentiate between different levels of severity in COVID-19 patients. The system will decide for each patient using a neural network-based fusion system, which combines the estimates of the Gibbs energy from the three MGRF-based models. The proposed system were assessed using 307 COVID-19-infected patients, achieving an accuracy of [Formula: see text], a sensitivity of [Formula: see text], and a specificity of [Formula: see text], indicating a high level of prediction accuracy.