| Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) is highly contagious with limited treatment options. Early and accurate diagnosis of Covid-19 is
crucial in reducing the spread of the disease and its accompanied mortality. Currently, detection by reverse transcriptasepolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is the gold standard of outpatient and inpatient detection of Covid-19. RT-PCR is a rapid
method; however, its accuracy in detection is only ~70–75%. Another approved strategy is computed tomography (CT) imaging. CT
imaging has a much higher sensitivity of ~80–98%, but similar accuracy of 70%. To enhance the accuracy of CT imaging detection,
we developed an open-source framework, CovidCTNet, composed of a set of deep learning algorithms that accurately differentiates
Covid-19 from community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and other lung diseases. CovidCTNet increases the accuracy of CT imaging
detection to 95% compared to radiologists (70%). CovidCTNet is designed to work with heterogeneous and small sample sizes
independent of the CT imaging hardware. To facilitate the detection of Covid-19 globally and assist radiologists and physicians in
the screening process, we are releasing all algorithms and model parameter details as open-source. Open-source sharing of
CovidCTNet enables developers to rapidly improve and optimize services while preserving user privacy and data ownership. |