Drawing Insights from COVID-19 Infected Patients With no Past Medical History Using CT Scan Images and Machine Learning Techniques: A Study on 200 Patients

Abstract

Abstract As the whole world is witnessing what novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) can do to the mankind, it presents several unique features also. In absence of specific vaccine for COVID-19, it is essential to detect the disease at an early stage and isolate an infected patient. Till today there is a global shortage of testing labs and testing kits for COVID-19. This paper discusses about the role of machine learning techniques for getting important insights like whether lung Computed Tomography (CT) scan should be the first screening /alternative test for real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), Is COVID-19 pneumonia different from other viral pneumonia and if yes how to distinguish it using lung CT scan images from the carefully selected data of lung CT scan COVID-19 infected patients from the hospitals of Italy, China and India having no past medical illnesses i.e. high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. The reason for selecting images of the patients having no past illnesses history is that people with medical problems are already known to develop serious illness because of COVID-19 but we wanted to check and analyse condition of those patients (lung condition) which don’t have past medical history using CT scan images.