Kuala Lumpur, 15 May 2020 – Possibly the first in the country to introduce the use of x-ray imaging in the detection of possible COVID-19 infection, Robomy Sdn. Bhd., an AI-based company based in Kuala Lumpur has recently launched its AI-based system called Robomy Intelligent X-ray Analyzer (RIXA).
Chief Technology Officer of Robomy, an artificial intelligence research and development company based in Kuala Lumpur, Mohammed Afsal asserted that the technology can be a breakthrough advance in our fight against COVID-19 pandemic. He says “Riding on the digitisation tehnology, we are confident that the system can assist doctors and radiologists to detect COVID-10 positive results information which can be stored in a portal, and can be accessed at any point of time. With the reduction of compliance-related paperwork and minimisation of human contact that this system is able to offer, we believe in time to come, this will be a priority screening system over other testing systems for COVID-19”.
The system which can handle multiple X-ray images at a time generates the result within seconds after the images are uploaded to the system, where it can detect the possibility of a COVID-19 infection with a high accuracy. Chest X-ray remains one of the commonly performed radiological exams in COVID-19 procedures.
Calling it a community initiative, Mohammed Afsal said it was in response to an urgent call by the Government of Malaysia for ICT technology experts to join forces with medical experts to tap on their ingenuity, brains and resources to combat the COVID-19 outbreak in Malaysia and beyond.
The use of Robomy’s AI system would also save a significant amount of time and cost for healthcare services, compared to other testing procedures that have to be done in a laboratory. This would, in turn, enable hospitals and clinics to conduct mass testing “on the go” as the system can also be installed outside the business premises as long as there is a mobile chest X-ray facility.
“With its cost affordability, this would enable MOH and private hospitals to further widen its mass-screening activities with the focus on targeted groups and locations as the results can be obtained fast.
On the system which is run by artificial Intelligence, Mohammed Afsal implies that it has the potential to take the huge amount of data produced by hospitals, and using technologies like machine learning, generate information that can assist medical experts and improve the speed and accuracy of medical diagnosis.
The AI (Deep Learning)-based image analysis software is developed by training the AI model on COVID-19 X-ray images. RIXA will allow doctors and medical experts to create a more effective treatment plan for fighting COVID-19 pandemic. Mohammed Afsal said that, in order to get better and detailed results with RIXA, the system needs to be trained on a wider range of X-ray images from COVID-19 infected patients and he is therefore requesting relevant authorities for more images to train the AI model.
According to Mohammed Afsal, RIXA could not only help detect COVID-19 cases more easily from chest X-rays but also could help predict potential outcomes for patients based on the pathological conditions. This also helps in the development of effective treatment plan for the coronavirus.
The company welcomes the MOH and more private hospitals and clinics to collaborate for a trial-run of the RIXA™.
Using RIXA™ is a simple 3-stage process as show in the images below.
