Fighting Tuberculosis with GPUs and Deep Learning

For those in developing countries with tuberculosis, the difference between life and death often comes down to having a physician with the expertise to properly read chest X-rays. And the numbers show that many are dying of the disease unnecessarily. TB has passed HIV/AIDS as the world’s top infectious killer, with the World Health Organization estimating that 1.8 million people died from the disease in 2015. Some 95 percent of those deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries where access to radiological expertise is often minimal. A pair of researchers at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University aim to change that. By combining their passions for chest X-rays and deep learning, Paras Lakhani, an assistant professor of radiology, and Baskaran Sundaram, a professor of radiology, may have opened the door to stemming the incidence of TB.