Foch Hospital uses artificial intelligence to create augmented radiologists

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Since the end of December 2019, the Foch hospital (Suresnes) has routinely used new software capable of automatically identifying the various organs of the thorax and the tissue changes that may constitute the signs of an illness. Officially presented on January 22, 2020, "AI-Rad Companion Chest CT" helps radiologists diagnose faster using a chest scanner.

This device is the fruit of a collaboration between Foch Hospital and Siemens Healthineers. The two entities signed a 12-year agreement in January 2019 to improve the performance of the healthcare facility's medical imaging platform.

Create "augmented radiologists"

"There are fewer and fewer radiologists and more and more examinations. The use of artificial intelligence makes it possible to improve this situation by creating 'augmented radiologists"", explains Professor Philippe Grenier, thoracic radiologist and head of the Artificial Intelligence project within the Foch hospital, contacted by The Digital Factory. Indeed, the software "AI-Rad Companion Chest CT" can automatically perform many tasks which are very tedious for a radiologist. He is also able to detect a series of clinical signs that the professional might not even think of because he is focused on the symptoms that his patient has described to him.

"After the acquisition of the images of the thorax thanks to the scanner, the 3D images are reconstructed and a series of reconstruction is selected. We click and send it to the cloud where the AI ​​software will analyze the images. After 14 to 17 minutes, the radiologist receives all the information about his workstation", details Professor Philippe Grenier.

"AI-Rad Companion Chest CT" can perform six tasks: segment the contours of the lungs and calculate the volume of the lobes, detect pulmonary nodules that can cause cancer, quantify pulmonary emphysema (pathway disease) aerial), analyze the thoracic aorta, detect coronary calcifications to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease and measure the height of the vertebral bodies. At the end, there is a "synthetic visualization with key images of the different functions and tables of all the measures"which the professional will be able to integrate into the patient's medical file.

For patients over the age of 40

This tool is not intended to be used on all patients at Foch Hospital. "This software makes perfect sense for ambulatory chest scanners for patients over 40 because it is a tool for detecting abnormalities that was not requested by the clinician ", says Professor Philippe Grenier. In fact, below this age, the risks of developing lung cancer or having a cardiovascular disease are lower.

In the future, Professor Philippe Grenier imagines a very specific function for this new software: screening for lung cancer. "This tool will have a great reason to be. This is the day when we will set up, in France, systematic lung cancer screening by scanner from the age of 50", he explains. Indeed, this software is perfectly suited as it is capable of automatically detecting pulmonary nodules whose shape and volume may be the first sign of such a disease.

Foch Hospital continues its digital transformation

In addition to this partnership, which is just starting to bear fruit, since 1 January 2020, the Foch hospital has had its own health data warehouse (EDS). The objective is "to improve more or less rare diagnostic research and the time required to access clinical care"The hospital also hopes that this database will create"a prediction tool"of the state of health and possible relapses of transplant patients. In fact, this hospital establishment opened its University Chair in transplantation in 2018 to precisely address this problem.

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