COVID-19 Chest CT Scan Analysis

Clinical Recommendations and Machine Learning Applications

In this image the CT slices are from Radiology Assistant. The ROC curves and upper model figure are from Mei et al. The middle model figure is from Li et al.

This post delves in to the use of CT scans in the COVID-19 pandemic, including current guidelines from medical experts (as of August 2020) and examples of recent research papers that use machine learning to make predictions from CT scans of COVID-19 patients.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this post is medical advice.

Diagnosis of COVID-19 with RT-PCR

The gold standard for diagnosis of COVID-19 is reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which is a laboratory test that detects genetic material (RNA) from the COVID-19 virus:

Figure Source: Mayo Clinic

The RT-PCR test is the “nasal swab test.” The nasal swab is intended to collect virus, if present, so that its RNA can be detected:

Figure Source: New England Journal of Medicine

The RT-PCR test has high specificity (true negative rate). The specificity is close to 100%, meaning that almost all healthy people are correctly…