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Artificial Intelligence

Recurso 2

ImagingCovid19AI.eu now an international initiative

These are difficult times, it is clear that this COVID19 pandemic that is assailing the world is going to change our way of life. It is time to be united and to collaborate, where doctors, researchers, mathematicians, physicists and the entire scientific community unites to fight the COVID-19 virus by sharing our knowledge and research.

After opening up free access to our QUIBIM Precision – COVID19 platform and AI algorithms to the scientific community to find new diagnostic tools and ways to understand the mechanisms and aggressiveness of the disease, we co-founded the Imaging COVID-19 AI initiative, a multicenter European project to enhance computed tomography (CT) in the diagnosis of COVID-19 by using artificial intelligence. QUIBIM_AI_COVID19

This collaborative initiative coordinated by the Netherlands Cancer Institute, together with Rovobision, the European Society of Medical Imaging Informatics (EuSoMII) and QUIBIM, has had a great response with the participation of several hospitals, radiology centres and research groups from across the world including Italy, Spain, Netherlands, India, and Korea among others.

Furthermore, last March 30th the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) announced (press release) its willingness to join this initiative. We are proud to welcome our partnering with this renowned society by joining the Imaging COVID-19 AI initiative to spread it throughout the medical imaging community around the world.

“The organizations expressed the common goal of creating a secure way to share COVID-19 imaging, in order to assess lung involvement more accurately with AI. They will collaborate to enable hospitals to provide imaging data securely and efficiently with researchers, respecting privacy and ethical principles. They will define and publish protocols for selecting and labeling imaging data associated with COVID-19 as a tool for researchers and practitioners. Other interested organizations are invited to join this coalition to share information and facilitate a rapid response to COVID-19.” the Radiological Society of North America declares in the press release issued on March 30th, 2020.

Fighting COVID19 through AI

This initiative for automated diagnosis and quantitative analysis of COVID-19 will create a deep learning model for automated detection and classification of COVID-19 on CT scans. This model will also be used for assessing disease severity in patients by quantification of lung involvement to rapidly develop an artificial intelligence solution.

The number of people affected by COVID-19 is increasing every day with healthcare systems across the world on the verge of collapsing, which is why QUIBIM took part in this initiative to develop a tool to support doctors against this virus. As the initiative states “automated image analysis with artificial intelligence techniques has the potential to optimize the role of CT in the assessment of COVID-19 by allowing accurate and fast diagnosis of infection in a large number of patients. AI has the potential to support clinical decision making and improve workflow efficiency.”

Our role in the initiative

As a company specialized in machine learning and image processing technologies for medical images, QUIBIM provides to the initiative the research platform QUIBIM Precision for development and deployment of the deep learning model. The data will be transferred directly and securely from each participating hospital to the servers of the company. The QUIBIM platform, as well as other software utilities to upload images and clinical information provided, enforces a role-based authentication mechanism which guarantees that Study Data remain protected and only available to authorized users.

In that sense, QUIBIM places at the service of the project its experience on interconnectivity with hospitals and sending images through its tool MIUC (Medical Imaging Universal Connector) following all regulations of GDPR, anonymization and personal data processing.

Visit Imaging COVID-19 AI initiative site – LINK

 

 

Lung texture outcomes in Chest Xray

Imaging, AI and radiomics to understand and fight coronavirus Covid-19
  • There is currently no effective cure for this virus and there is an urgent need to increase global knowledge in its mechanisms of infection, lung parenchyma damage distribution and associated patterns.
  • Artificial Intelligence and radiomics applied to X-Ray and Computed Tomography are useful tools in the detection and follow-up of the disease.

In December 2019 the city of Wuhan (China) became the center of a pneumonia outbreak of an unknown cause with global implications. In early 2020, Chinese scientists isolated a novel coronavirus (CoV), from patients in Wuhan, formerly  known as 2019-nCoV 1 and now renamed as Covid-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO). Patients infected with this strain present a wide range of symptoms 2, most seem to have mild disease, with about 20% appear to progress to severe disease, including pneumonia, respiratory failure and in around 2% of cases death 3. Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties, fever and cough 4.

Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). This novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain not previously identified in humans. Although this outbreak had its start in China, today there are several countries around the world with identified cases, making it a worldwide public health concern.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 acute respiratory disease reported by provinces, regions and cities in China, 13 February 2020*

Table 1. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 acute respiratory disease reported by provinces, regions and cities in China, 13 February 2020*

How could AI and imaging biomarkers aid to fight against this emerging zoonotic illness?

There is currently no effective cure for this virus and there is an urgent need to increase global knowledge in its mechanisms of infection, lung parenchyma damage distribution and associated patterns, not only for disease detection or to complement the diagnosis, but also to support the design of a curative therapy. AI and radiomics applied to X-Ray and Computed Tomography are useful tools in the detection and follow-up of the disease. As stated in 5, conspicuous ground grass opacity lesions in the peripheral and posterior lungs on CT images are indicative of Covid-19 pneumonia. Therefore, CT can play an important role in the diagnosis of Covid-19 as an advanced imaging evidence once findings in chest radiographs are indicative of coronavirus. AI algorithms and radiomics features derived from Chest X-rays would be of huge help to undertake massive screening programs that could take place in any country with access to X-ray equipment and aid in the diagnosis of Covid-19 6.

QUIBIM_StructuredReport_Chest-X-Ray-Classifier

FIGURE 1: QUIBIM – Quantitative Structured Report – Chest X-Ray Classifier

In order to speed up the discovery of disease mechanisms, QUIBIM’s Chest X-Ray Classifier (Figure 1) can be used to detect abnormalities and extract textural features of the altered lung parenchima that could be related to specific signatures of the Covid-19 virus. We have combined all our knowledge in AI and radiomics in this novel analysis pipeline specifically designed to extract disease patterns. First, the Chest X-Ray is automatically analyzed using a deep learning classifier to provide an abnormality score between 0 and 1. Any abnormality score above 0.3 is considered as an abnormal case. After this initial analysis, lungs are automatically segmented using a Mask R-CNN like convolutional neural network architecture and finally, a massive extraction of texture features is applied (figure header). This pipeline has been completely automated and will serve to provide additional information to the diagnosis of Covid-19.

QUIBIM is committed to provide access to our existing AI technology to find new diagnostic tools and ways to understand the mechanisms and aggressiveness of the disease, contributing to the efforts to find a cure.  Any clinician can fill this form created by QUIBIM to get free credentials for the use of the AI Chest X-Ray classification analysis technology available in the QUIBIM Precision Cloud platform. This research tool is offered to any doctor worldwide with the need of analyzing Chest X-Rays with suspicion of Covid-19.

References:

  1. https://reference.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-novel-coronavirus-6012559
  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31978945
  3. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200128-sitrep-8-ncov-cleared.pdf
  4. https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus
  5. https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200274
  6. https://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=xra&pag=dis&ItemID=127983

Authors:

 

Rafael López González – R&D Engineer

 

NVIDIA QUIBIM

QUIBIM Brings AI to Radiology Workflows with NVIDIA EGX

Artificial intelligence is becoming a reality in radiology as new AI solutions are moving from research to clinical validation and daily clinical workflow.

QUIBIM (Valencia, Spain) has a proprietary software platform and develops AI algorithms across imaging modalities for quantitative imaging biomarkers used in hospitals, radiology centers and clinical trials focusing on body ( liver, prostate) and musculoskeletal analysis algorithms.

QUIBIM’s solutions have already demonstrated a major impact in partner hospitals and radiology centers with a 70% reduction in reporting time of multiple sclerosis cases of the brain using QUIBIM’s White Matter Lesions algorithm. In addition, a large hospital in Valencia, Spain, has experienced significant cost savings using QUIBIM’s Chest X-ray classifier product.

By being able to seamlessly integrate AI solutions in the radiology workflows, QUIBIM helps healthcare providers stay ahead of increasing amounts of data needed for patient care. For example: with the QUIBIM Precision® data mining tool, it is possible to obtain new disease phenotypes based on non-supervised AI clustering. The combined power of AI and edge computing can retain critical processing tasks on devices at the point of care to help in earlier diagnosis of disease and eliminating manual tasks of the radiologists, thereby enabling them to optimize reporting and interpretation.

QUIBIM Precision® and NVIDIA EGX

Delivering AI at the edge minimizes data privacy concerns and enables real-time AI for clinical decisions. QUIBIM and NVIDIA are bringing AI to the edge of medical imaging, the most important healthcare tool in early detection, with the NVIDIA EGX Intelligent Edge Computing Platform. Having the possibility to containerize algorithms on NGC, which is optimized on EGX systems, QUIBIM is able to expand its reach, which helps in the democratization of AI and the ability to provide access to care using AI even in the remote regions of the world.

By delivering new diagnostic and operational capabilities that enhance patient care, QUIBIM and NVIDIA EGX are ushering in a new generation of smart hospitals and radiology departments.

RSNA 2019

QUIBIM at RSNA 2019
with new features!

For the third consecutive year, and coinciding with our business expansion, currently installed in more than 60 hospitals and used by more than 20 clinical trials worldwide, QUIBIM attends this RSNA 2019 edition with new solutions based on artificial intelligence.

Located at the AI Showcase booth #10418, QUIBIM has set up three demo points where participants can interact and navigate the platform testing their main features:

  • AI app’s for quantitative analysis and workflow optimization
  • Radiomics Data Miner tool.
  • Quantitative and radiological structured reporting.
  • Vendor-agnostic system compatible with all PACS vendors and equipment manufacturers.
  • Head-to toe solution (neurology, chest, body, and musculoskeletal).
  • Advanced visualization tools: Zero-footprint DICOM viewer. 

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Seamless AI for Radiologists

QUIBIM Precision® platform integrates AI algorithms into the radiology department workflow with no clicks, making it an efficient system that provides a complete radiology solution covering the AI and quantitative needs.

In our strategy of providing value-driven solutions, QUIBIM uses AI as a tool for organ segmentation (prostate, liver, vertebraes, fat) using Deep Learning, lesions detection (white matter lesions), and classification (chest X-ray). These AI solutions are seamlessly integrated with PACS and RIS making them a part of daily clinical practice, by activating smart back-end rules engine to schedule post-processing tasks.

Discover how QUIBIM empowers radiologists’ workflow at booth #10418 – AI Showcase in the North Hall Level 2.

RSNA_schedule a meeting

In addition, as an advanced research tool QUIBIM has integrated a prostate nosological imaging module based on a non-supervised AI algorithm using quantitative data obtained from multiparametric magnetic resonance (mp-MR) images. This method could serve as a pipeline for the development of nosologic maps and speed up the case assessment and reporting time. This tool helps radiologists’ daily work leading them focus on small zones with malignant features that would be undetected in most of the cases.

More at RSNA 2019

AI THEATER PRESENTATION

Discover at the AI Theater our presentation AI Integrated in Daily Workflow with QUIBIM Precision: Visualize, Annotate, Quantify, Report and Discover how QUIBIM Precision® is providing a seamless solution for AI in radiology, with a complete integration in clinical routine and a completely automated rules engine to get all results before reporting. Special analysis modules for brain, musculoskeletal, lung and body-oncology applications. Presented by Angel Alberich-Bayarri, PhD, our CEO and Founder.

Monday 12:00-12:20 PM | AI24 | Room: AI Showcase, North Building, Level 2.  ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR

AI WORKSHOP

Also, we have organized a special workshop for those interested in a Head-to-Toe Hands-on with AI and Imaging Biomarkers Integrated in PACS. QUIBIM Precision. We will show how to empower radiologists’ daily practice by offering full control over our AI solutions. We will show how AI solutions are seamlessly integrated with PACS and RIS on a daily practice and how to interpret quantitative imaging and AI results.  Presented by Angel Alberich-Bayarri, PhD | Fabio Garcia-Castro | Mar Roca-Sogorb, PhD

Tuesday 1:00-2:30 PM | HW32 | Room: AI Showcase, North Building, Level 2

Interested?  PLACES ARE LIMITED!

Register now

In order to get the best experience for this workshop, it is highly recommended that attendees bring a laptop with a keyboard and decent-sized screen.

Join us at RSNA 2019!

 

 

eusomii-annual-meeting-2019-senza-indirizzo

QUIBIM HOSTING EUSOMII ANNUAL MEETING 2019

Next 18th and 19th October 2019, Valencia will host the Annual Meeting of the EUSOMII society (AMI2019). The society has planned a two days congress combining educational and scientific sessions in the field of medical imaging informatics.

In this edition, QUIBIM will participate with 2 lectures, 3 oral communications, 7 posters and a QUIBIM Precision exhibit space for all those interested in our artificial intelligence algorithms and imaging biomarkers solutions. If you want to book a demo, do not hesitate and book a timeslot!

Book a DEMO

“As a board member of EUSOMII, it is an honor to bring to Valencia, our city, such an interesting program. Holding this meeting in an innovative environment like the Hospital Universitario y Politécnico La Fe de Valencia is a sign of the change that healthcare is experiencing nowadays” explained Ángel Alberich-Bayarri, CEO & Founder of QUIBIM and Chair Industry and Startup Committee of EUSOMII.

Check out our participations at AMI 2019:

FRIDAY, October 18th 2019

  • Keynote Lecture I – Imaging biomarkers and radiomics: source of big data for AI – Dr. Luis Martí-Bonmatí

SATURDAY, October 19th, 2019

  • Didactic Lecture II-III – Imaging Biomarkers – Dr. Angel Alberich-Bayarri
  • Oral Communication – Image analysis using an intercontinental infrastructure for the deployment of
    trustworthy cloud services: the ATMOSPHERE project. Authors: Ignacio Blanquer, Eduardo Camacho-Ramos, Andrey Brito, Ana Jimenez-Pastor, Christof Fetzer, Altigran da Silva, Amanda Calatrava, Fabio García-Castro, Ángel Alberich- Bayarri, Franciso Brasileiro.
  • Oral Communication – Quantification and evaluation of pre-post exercise femoral cartilage thickness and T2
    changes in ultramarathon athletes. Authors: Fabio García-Castro, Jordi Catalá March, Daniel Brotons Cuixat, Miquel Llobet Llambrich, Eduard Sánchez Osorio, Ángel Alberich-Bayarri.
  • Oral Communication – Automated Lung Segmentation in Chest Radiographs using Deeply Supervised Convolutional Neural Networks Trained by means of a Database Augmented with a Generative Adversarial
    Authors: Rafael López.

POSTERS:

  1. Automatic cartilage segmentation in 3D T2w high resolution MR using a Deeply
    Supervised Multi-Planar Convolutional Neural Network. Authors: Ana Jimenez-Pastor, Fabio García-Castro, Ángel Alberich-Bayarri, Luis Marti- Bonmati.
  2. Automatic quantification of white hyperintensities in a healthy aging cohort using
    Convolutional Neural Networks. Authors: Ana Jimenez-Pastor, Eduardo Camacho-Ramos, Ángel Alberich-Bayarri, Carles Biarnes, Josep Garre, Joan Carles Vilanova, Rafel Ramos, Reinald Pamplona, Salvador Pedraza, Josep Puig.
  3. Adaptation of TLAP-certified radiological structured reports to be used in a cloud
    platform environment. Authors: Fernando Bacha-Villamide, Eduardo Camacho-Ramos, Alejandro Mañas-Garcia, Luis Martí-Bonmatí, Angel Alberich-Bayarri.
  4. Development and validation of an inter and intra-sequence registration algorithm in
    multiparametric prostate resonance imaging. Authors: Matías Fernández, Mar Roca-Sogorb, Fabio García-Castro, Raúl Yébana, María Asunción Torregrosa, Leonardo Bittencourt, Margarita García Fontes, Paula Pelechano, Luis Martí- Bonmatí, Ángel Alberich-Bayarri.
  5. Computer aided diagnosis for Rheumatic Heart Disease by AI applied to features
    extraction from echocardiography. Authors: Eduardo Camacho-Ramos, Ana Jimenez-Pastor, Ignacio Blanquer, Fabio García- Castro, Ángel Alberich-Bayarri.
  6. Outcome prediction after acute stroke through functional magnetic resonance imaging. Authors: Eduardo Camacho-Ramos, Ana Jimenez-Pastor, Carles Biarnes, Ángel Alberich-Bayarri, Salvador Pedraza, Josep Puig.
  7. Implementation of an interactive radiological structured report management system
    with AI annotation capabilities. Authors: Alejandro Mañas-Garcia, Eduardo Camacho-Ramos, Ismael Gonzalez, Fernando Bacha, Ángel Alberich-Bayarri, Luis Marti-Bonmati.

Our Quibimers are already heating engines for AMI2019. We look forward to meeting you!

MS WORLD DAY_QUIBIM

IMAGING BIOMARKERS IN MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

Pain, depression, slurred speech and feeling of numbness, tingling, or weakness. These are just some symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) disease, a long-term condition that affects the brain and spinal cord.

In MS, the immune system confuses myelin with a foreign body and attacks it. The loss of this protective sheath that covers the nerve fibers will disrupt the messages travelling between the brain and the body. These messages may be slowed down, interrupted, or may not occur at all.

Eventually, the person sees affected the ability of controlling their own actions. The signs and symptoms of MS may vary greatly depending on the stage of the disease and the location of the affected nerve fibers. Movement affections, vision problems, altered speech and dizziness are common consequences of this condition.

It is the most widespread neurological disorder of young adults globally. The disease can be developed at any age, but its main incidence appears in the range of 20-50 years old. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society estimates that near 2.3 million people are living with this disease around the world. It also calculates that 1 million of them are placed in the United States, where 200 new cases are diagnosed every week.

Together with blood tests, medical history and neurologic exams, imaging scans have also proven to be a key element for the diagnosis of MS, concretely the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the reference diagnostic technique for the identification of lesions in MS.

Damaged white matter has a prolonged T2 relaxation time due to increased tissue water content and to degradation of the myelin, being well depicted on MRI and concretely on Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) images. In this MR-sequence, MS lesions are seen as white matter hyperintensities (WMH). Nowadays, manual segmentation of WMH areas is still the gold standard to quantify the total lesion volume and to know the number of lesions in the brain. However, this methodology turns MS patient’s diagnosis and follow-up in a cumbersome and time-consuming task with high intra- and inter- observer variabilities.

Zero-click tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, more concretely, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) can be used to automatically segment WMH on FLAIR images in a few minutes. Novel designed architectures are composed of an ensemble of CNNs built on standard convolutional, dilated and residual layers.

Multiple Sclerosis_QUIBIM

These tools are capable of fine segmentation of the lesion avoiding the physiological WMH as the ependymal layer. Physicians can obtain quantitative information that helps them to achieve a more accurate and earlier diagnosis, thus reducing the workload and improving the time-efficiency while enhancing patient assessment.

What information does it provide?

Once WMH are segmented, relevant lesion statistics are quantified: lesion number, total lesion volume, dominant lesion volume, dissemination, or entropy among others. All this information can be summarized in a structured report along with the most characteristic slices. These processes will easily assist physicians in the diagnosis of MS patients not in the future, but now.

QuibimStructuredReport_White matter lesions

AUTHORS:

Eduardo Camacho Ramos.

Ana Jiménez Pastor.

QUIBIM_chest_xray_classifier_logo3

QUIBIM’s AI-FUELED CHEST X-RAY CLASSIFIER GETS CE MARK

  • Chest X-ray classifier is added as a new CE cleared tool within QUIBIM Precision platform, which already received CE mark class IIa certification earlier in 2019.

  • QUIBIM’s Chest X-Ray Classification AI-Tool dynamically learns using new images, meaning the system is continuously evolving and improving over time.

Valencia, Spain – 27th May 2019. Spanish healthcare AI company QUIBIM today announced that its AI-powered Chest X-Ray Classification tool has received CE certification. The company already obtained the class IIa CE mark earlier this year for the imaging biomarker analysis algorithms, the zero footprint DICOM viewer and the platform within the QUIBIM Precision platform, becoming the first Spanish firm to ever receive the clearance.

QUIBIM applies machine learning and image processing techniques to extract imaging biomarkers from medical images in order to assist radiologists and physicians in daily practice. With its AI-based chest x-ray classifier, QUIBIM helps to detect pathological findings that could go unreported due to the heavy workload of radiology departments.

QuibimStructuredReport_Chest X Ray Classifier

“Our tool was designed to prioritize unreported, potentially pathological radiographs, to help radiologists be more efficient by focusing their efforts on studies that are more likely to have pathologies. We are sure this will have an impact in big healthcare systems,” Angel Alberich-Bayarri, QUIBIM CEO and founder, explained.

The solution makes use of a novel architecture based on referee networks combined with Convolutional Neural Networks that have been trained with a database of more than 500,000 images, to calculate the final probability of the X-Ray of being abnormal. Afterwards, the probabilities are used to estimate the presence of pathologies in chest X-Rays.

Because of this Artificial Intelligence methodology, the classifier understands the visual patterns that are most indicative of the different pathologies using the knowledge extracted from the large dataset of radiographs used to train the networks. “QUIBIM’s Chest X-Ray Classification Tool is able to learn further using new images, which means that this system is continually improving and evolving with time,” Rafael López, Artificial Intelligence Engineer at QUIBIM, said.

QUIBIM’S Chest X-Ray Analysis Tool is already available at QUIBIM Precision®, accessible through the cloud with just a few clicks or it can be fully integrated in the radiology department’s workflow as a local solution for seamless interpretation of chest X-Rays.

Breast cancer QUIBIM

QUIBIM uses AI to boost
breast cancer research
As the first ESMO Breast Cancer Congress unfolded 2-4 May in Berlin, Germany, QUIBIM CEO highlighted the role played by artificial intelligence (AI) in breast cancer research.

The European Society of Medical Oncology focused on the progress in treatment options and improved outcomes for breast cancer (BC) patients during its first meeting dedicated to the topic (¹).

One of the key messages of the conference was that therapeutic innovations should go hand in hand with a multidisciplinary, fully integrated approach to patient care, a scenario in which AI can increasingly help make a difference, according to QUIBIM CEO & founder Angel Alberich-Bayarri.

Breast cancer_QUIBIM

QUIBIM breast cancer structured report

“AI, and in particular image quantification, can help significantly advance knowledge of this multi-faceted disease, by enabling earlier and better detection,” he said.

From the Pacific to the rest of the world

Recently QUIBIM partnered with the AI Precision Health Institute (AI-PHI) at the University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center in Honolulu, to manage, store and quantitatively analyze medical images and algorithms in breast cancer research.

Using the QUIBIM Precision® image analysis platform, AI-PHI researchers will create large scale imaging repositories with automated extraction of imaging biomarkers to characterize patients’ status. The solution will first be used as the central repository for the mammography studies conducted in the Pacific and will include mammograms from over 5 million women.

The University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center is one of 69 NCI designated cancer centers in the United States and the only one in Hawai‘i and all of the Pacific Islands. It is the only institution that uses AI to analyze medical images to assess health and predict risk of disease in the region.

The project is expected to grow exponentially as its principal investigator Dr. John Shepherd is keen on inviting selected reference centers all across the world to join the network. “It is a very interesting and pioneering work for QUIBIM, and our first big cooperation in the breast cancer setting,” Alberich said.

Seamless integration into clinical workflow

The QUIBIM Precision® image analysis platform enables to incorporate AI algorithms regardless of the institution where it is deployed, to facilitate integration into workflow.

“Researchers can program their own algorithm and code, and add it as a plugin to the platform. This feature, combined with the advanced storage and multi-user annotation capabilities of the platform, allows for a wide adoption within research groups and institutions working with AI. Time for deployment of algorithms in the real world is shortened by 25%, since you have the whole AI pipeline in just one place,” he explained.

The solution, which includes not only quantitative image analysis but also structured reporting capabilities, can be integrated into the radiology workflow and add value to this service. It can for instance be used to integrate AI algorithms to detect cancer without the need of radiologists in a first-read.

Earlier this year the platform received CE Mark certification as class IIa Medical Device, including the imaging biomarker analysis algorithms, the zero footprint DICOM viewer and the platform hosting these components and medical imaging data. The platform is now available for commercial deployment in European hospitals and diagnostic imaging centers.

In addition to the platform, the certification includes 15 algorithms in the five key areas of interest of the company: oncology, neurology, musculoskeletal, liver and lung. 

Also included in the CE Mark certification is the DataMiner, which was designed in collaboration with the team of Prof. Daniel Keim from Konstanz University to provide advanced visual analytics of large databases of patients for population health management and scientific exploitation. The DICOM web viewer that enables the user to visualize the images of a sequence, draw ROIs or apply filters is also included in the certification.

QUIBIM applies machine learning to develop tools for imaging data quantification, to accelerate image reconstruction, segmentation, detection and data mining. Beyond the breast, the company has created AI algorithms to help detect changes produced by brain and prostate cancer, but also other diseases in the hematological scenario such as non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

(¹): https://www.esmo.org/Conferences/ESMO-Breast-Cancer-2019?utm_campaign=PRESS%20-%20Breast&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=72075686&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9pH5mSHFhwzXnTGp6oSizohrD75uXccBxo1woBVGUFhJl3K5y_p4Ms4Hoa3LcwRJ_KvILSmOWhsrZxTZSWLwumEXOnOw&_hsmi=72075686

D3YI165WAAUCunr

Comprehensive solutions will boost AI use in medical imaging

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the radiologist’s workflow is still challenging, but all-inclusive solutions can help unfold algorithms’ power, QUIBIM CEO and founder Angel Alberich-Bayarri explained during the ESR AI Premium Event, which was hosted by the European Society of Radiology (ESR) and the European School of Radiology (ESOR) earlier this month in Barcelona.

Medical imaging AI is a bubbling field but very few solutions are used in daily practice today, Alberich told delegates during the busy meeting, which gathered top researchers in medical imaging AI and thousands of online attendees. “We have a lot of research, AI algorithms and start-ups, but few are really embedded in the radiology workflow,” he said.

A main obstacle to AI integration is a lack of knowledge of utilities. For most imaging biomarkers, the real application relationship with clinical endpoints on a large scale – diagnostic, prognostic and treatment response – remains unknown. Clinicians don’t want to integrate biomarkers that have not been validated, but if they don’t gather information massively and try to understand how biomarkers relate to the disease, they will never help advance healthcare, Alberich explained.

“We have to change our minds and not wait for biomarkers to be validated before they can be extracted on a daily basis. Similarly to genomics: we have to do sequencing and study diseases to detect unknown mutations by ourselves,” he said.

The lack of annotated data is another challenge. Radiology reports are not filled with a focus on data annotation, but on descriptive language that needs to be processed by natural language processing (NLP). However they would be an ideal source of knowledge, and not just for the clinicians.

One-stop-shop platform using biomarkers

QUIBIM was created in 2015 as a spinoff company of La Fe Hospital in Valencia, Spain, to help radiologists make the most of AI in their everyday practice, by providing a one-stop-shop solution using imaging biomarkers and powerful algorithms.

“Offering a single solution embedded in workflows is key because radiologists will not buy all start-up micro developments but the best platform,” he said.

The very name of the company is an acronym and stands for Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers in Medicine. Imaging biomarkers enable to measure everything happening in the body to extract parameters that can provide information on the tissue of the lesion type beyond classification. Fuelled by AI, these biomarkers can deliver unprecedented information on disease.

“Many different imaging pipelines have dramatically changed thanks to AI integration. For example, we used to have lots of problems doing segmentation with traditional algorithms in tissues and organs such as the liver in MRI. Thanks to AI, segmentation has improved and with it our knowledge of liver disease,” he said.

A prerequisite is to integrate data mining solutions to make radiomics easy to everyone. This means it must be embedded in the same platform, as current solutions are not able to treat this amount of quantitative data from patient cohorts. “A lot of parameters are quantified in daily routine, but there is still no way to store and process them massively. Our current PACS systems are simply not prepared for quantitative data,” Alberich said.

There is a lot of sense in working within a structured report (SR), as it enables to annotate data that will further advance research. Prospectively the studies can be very well annotated if AI imaging biomarkers are integrated in the fields of the SR. Working with the SR would tremendously facilitate communication between clinicians and with patients.

“We are building the radiology report of the future, only we’re doing it now. Patients do not understand radiology reports, so we have to change the way we communicate. We are very much aligned with the standardized way blood test findings are reported, everyone understands whether findings are in or out of range and if there is any abnormality. We have to be more intuitive in our communication,” Alberich said.

QUIBIM is developing quantitative, one-page long structured reports that are actionable, quantitative and automated. The reports are designed with KOLs in each speciality, to make sure they reflect the reality of clinical practice.

Clinical input and powerful technology

Cooperation with clinicians is a key axis for the company, which uses a stepwise model to create new solutions with clinicians in the loop.

The company develops highly performing AI algorithms using unprecedented network architectures, for instance, multiscale convolutional networks ensemble in brain MR, 2.5D network in liver MR and referee network in chest x-ray, and hundreds of thousands of annotated images that have been acquired through cooperation with researchers and university hospitals.

QUIBIM has launched algorithms in different product areas to provide a head to toe imaging biomarker solution; in neuro for Alzheimer, ALS, MS, stroke and cerebrovascular events; in MSK for articulations; in chest for screening, COPD and fibrosis; and in breast for screening. More products will soon be released that will focus on other body areas.

More than 60 hospitals worldwide currently use QUIBIM tools, most of which have received CE marks and/or are FDA pending. The company has notably developed the new ESOR teaching platform and has supplied its QUIBIM Precision® image analysis platform to the AI Precision Health Institute at the University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center in Honolulu. QUIBIM has received €3.5m funding ever since its creation and has offices in Spain and the U.S.

Parenchima workshop quibim

First QUIBIM Precision Hands-On Parenchima Cost Workshop

Valencia, March 14, 2019 –  Celebrating the World Kidney Day, QUIBIM, with the support of the Parenchima initiative, organized the first QUIBIM Precision Training Workshop for leading scientific researchers in medical imaging of kidney from 25 European countries.

On March 12th – 13th, QUIBIM hosted its first face-to-face workshop in Valencia (Spain) to train researchers and engineers who want to integrate medical image quantification algorithms in the Quibim Precision® platform. This is an initiative by QUIBIM with the objective of opening the platform to radiologists, clinicians and researchers who want to develop and implement their own MRI algorithms for chronic kidney disease.

QUIBIM was selected in the previous annual meeting of the Parenchima consortium in  Prague, (October 4th-5th, 2018), as the best system for medical imaging data management and integration of new analysis algorithms for the COST action project. Thanks to its ability to centralise, manage and store data extracted from the medical images from the different partner hospitals in a single platform, QUIBIM  offers the project to allow for acquisition protocols and algorithms comparison in terms of quality and precision, all at the same place.

PARENCHIMA WORKSHOP QUIBIM

The outcome of the project will consist of  new standards for image acquisition and analysis of MRI of the kidney for chronic kidney disease. QUIBIM’s team enjoyed hosting the workshop for the partners and are excited to be part of such a groundbreaking initiative.   

About PARENCHIMA

Renal MRI biomarkers are underused today in research and in clinical practice due to the need for dedicated in-house expertise and development. Transferring solutions to other centres is therefore a challenge, and this leads to a significant duplication of efforts, a lack of standardisation in the methods, and difficulties in comparing results between centres. This also limits commercial exploitation, and hinders the set-up of multi-centre trials or translation into clinical practice.

The overall aim of PARENCHIMA is to eliminate the main barriers to the broader study, commercial exploitation and clinical use of renal MRI biomarkers.

PARENCHIMA will coordinate the research of leading European groups in this area to:

  • improve the reproducibility and standardisation of renal MRI biomarkers;
  • increase their availability by developing an open-access toolbox with software and data;
  • demonstrate biological validity and clinical utility in a prospective multicentre clinical study.

In order to increase the impact of this project we are reaching out to join the efforts. More info at: www.renalmri.org

About QUIBIM

QUIBIM is a company from Valencia (Spain) which applies artificial intelligence and advanced computational models to radiological images to objectively measure changes produced by a lesion or by a pharmacological treatment, offering additional quantitative information to the qualitative approach of radiology. QUIBIM technology and services are applied in clinical practice, clinical trials, radiology education and research projects. More info at: www.quibim.com