High-performance computing and AI team up for COVID-19 diagnostic imaging

The Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (CLAIRE) taskforce on AI & COVID-19 supported the creation of a research group focused on AI-assisted diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia. The first results demonstrate the great potential of AI-assisted diagnostic imaging. Furthermore, the impact of the taskforce work is much larger, and it embraces the cross-fertilisation of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC): a partnership with rocketing potential for many scientific domains. Through several initiatives aimed at improving the knowledge of COVID-19, containing its diffusion, and limiting its effects, CLAIRE's COVID-19 taskforce was able to organise 150 volunteer scientists, divided into seven groups covering different aspects of how AI could be used to tackle the pandemic. Emanuela Girardi, the co-coordinator of the CLAIRE taskforce on AI & COVID-19, supported the setup of a novel European group to study the diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia assisted by artificial intelligence.