On August 24, 2018, Philips held "The First Product Launch of IntelliSpace Medical Imaging Artificial Intelligence Platform" in the first Bethune hospital of Jilin University, and also supported the “Medical Imaging Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Forum”. Many top experts and industry leaders were invited, including Prof. Changhong Liang (vice chair of the Chinese Medical Association Radiology Branch), Prof. Guangming Lu (vice chair of the Chinese Medical Association Radiology Branch), Prof. Zaiyi Liu (vice chair of the Chinese Medical Association Radiology Branch Youth Committee) and other well-known domestic experts. President of the first Bethune hospital of Jilin University Prof. Shucheng Hua, vice president Prof. Haifeng Wang and director of radiology Prof. Huimao Zhang attended the product launch and academic forum. The participating experts and scholars shared and exchanged innovative ideas, practical achievements and future development of artificial intelligence in imaging equipment, radiology process improvement, image-assisted diagnosis and imaging omics.
The president of PVmed Yao Lu (professor of School of Data Science and Computer Science, SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY) made a speech entitled "Application and Thinking of Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging". Taking breast cancer as an example, he introduced the application of computer-aided diagnosis, imaging omics and deep learning in medical imaging analysis. The differences and associations between traditional computer-aided diagnosis and imaging omics were also analyzed. Based on the characteristics of medical image datasets, He proposed a knowledge-based deep learning theory and algorithm for small sample. After the product launch, vice president Haifeng Wang, Director Huimao Zhang, Prof. Yao Lu, and Dr. Zhenyu Zhou attended the round table and accepted interviews. They discussed the problems and future development of medical treatment with AI and big data, and conducted in-depth communication on clinical work.
As the first institute to use the Philips “IntelliSpace Medical Imaging Artificial Intelligence Platform” in China, the first Bethune hospital of Jilin University is a comprehensive medical, teaching and research hospital which covers medical market in the three northeastern provinces. There are 67 clinical departments, and the number of outpatient and emergency in 2017 is 4.44 million. There is 1 national-local joint engineering laboratory, 6 key laboratories of Jilin province, 3 academicians, 4 experts of the “Thousand Talents Program”. In the past five years, the hospital has undertaken more than a thousand projects of provincial/ministerial level or above, focusing on the improvement of clinical technology, and also promoting the transformation of scientific and medical achievements. IntelliSpace is an integrated intelligent imaging platform for diagnosis and research that is certified by both FDA and CFDA. It can assist radiologists to provide accurate diagnosis and treatment for patients through intelligent imaging post-processing. PVmed's automatic delineation system for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) radiotherapy is the first third-party AI product embedded in the IntelliSpace platform, which can promote the transformation of AI imaging technology in clinical scenarios.
NPC has the highest incidence in otolaryngology malignant tumors. The survival rate of advanced NPC is 40-50%. The main treatment of NPC is intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The determination of gross tumor volume (GTV) and clinical target volume (CTV) is a key step during IMRT planning. In clinical practice, GTV and CTV is delineated by radiotherapists manually which is subjective and time consuming (about several hours per pathology). PVmed's automatic delineation system for NPC could delineate the GTV and CTV automatically. The delineation time is reduced by tens of times, and the delineation is very close to the radiotherapy experts.
Director of radiology in the first Bethune hospital of Jilin University, chair of the of the Chinese Medical Association radiology branch big data and artificial intelligence committee, Prof. Huimao Zhang said: I hope that the radiology will give the doctors another pair of eyes in the future. Based on AI technology, we will help doctors make better decisions of diagnosis and improve patients’ experience with more accurate treatment. Although AI can assist doctors in diagnosis by reducing clinical work intensity, improving efficiency, and filling the gap between supply and demand of medical resources, there are still challenges such as data labeling standards, data collection normalization, data security and so on. In order to solve these problems, AI experts and doctors need more cooperation. I hope that more and more radiologists will join the cross-border cooperation of medical imaging and AI, and promote the technical development and practical application of AI-aided diagnosis in the future.