Thursday, September 26, 2019

AI-Powered App Aids Treatment of Tuberculosis

In developing countries, where Tuberculosis is most deadly, monitoring involves a form of testing that has been used for hundreds of years. Clinicians study samples of lung fluid (called sputum) under a microscope and manually count the number of TB bacteria present, which sometimes reach into the hundreds. Cambridge Consultants, a U.K.-based consultancy, has set out to investigate whether an AI-powered monitoring system could provide a feasible alternative for keeping tabs on this killer. The result is BacillAi, a system that uses an AI-powered smartphone app and a standard-grade microscope to capture and analyze samples of sputum.