The AI-Rad Companion family supports radiologists, radiation oncologists, radiotherapists, and medical physicists through automated post-processing of MRI, CT, and X-ray datasets. The company claims that it saves the clinicians’ time and helps them to increase their diagnostic precision. The steady rise of radiology examinations and staff shortages leads to a limited amount of time per case and an increasing danger of missing clinically relevant findings. Siemens Healthineers is continuously working on further solutions to expand and enhance its AI-Rad Companion algorithms. These algorithms are said to be trained, tested, and validated against substantial data sets. The data sets are selected to reflect the population’s diversity, avoid bias, and deliver reliable results. “Meanwhile, I trust the algorithm. It gives me a sense of additional security.”, states Dr Martin Reiss-Zimmermann, Radiology Erfurt, Germany, who uses the AI-Rad Companion Chest CT in clinical practice.
AI-Rad Companion Chest X-ray
The new CE-labeled AI-Rad Companion Chest X-ray helps to detect radiographic findings on upright Chest X-ray images from multiple vendors and acts as a companion for the clinician. Its algorithms detect and characterize several lung and pleura findings, such as pulmonary lesions, pneumothorax, pleural effusion, consolidation, and atelectasis, and indicate their probability with confidence scores.
According to Siemens, AI-Rad Companion Chest X-ray supports the DICOM format and delivers PACS ready results while reading the original image. “AI-Rad Companion Chest X-ray is fully embedded in the reading workflow and the representation of outcomes is presented in a perfect manner. It delivers the right information in a short and crisp format.”, reports Dr Karsten Ridder, MVZ Prof Dr Uhlenbrock und Partner, Dortmund, Germany.
AI-Rad Companion Organs RT3
AI-Rad Companion helps improve diagnostic accuracy, but it also claims to support increasing efficiency in Radiation Therapy Planning. The new AI-Rad Companion Organs RT, CE-labelled, helps handle the time-consuming manual contouring in multiple CT slice images, which is essential for Radiation Therapy Planning. It’s AI algorithms help to achieve consistent, high-quality contours through automated organs at risk contouring. “The use of AI-Rad Companion Organs RT makes our life easier. Especially the contouring of organs in the upper abdomen, leads to a noteworthy reduction of turnaround time.”, states Dr Alexandros Papachristofilou at University Hospital Basel, Switzerland.
AI-Rad Companion Brain MR4 for morphometry analysis
AI-Rad Companion also assists in the interpretation of MR images of the brain. The assessment of different brain areas is not easy. The FDA cleared, and CE-marked AI-Rad Companion Brain MR for morphometry analysis automatically segments different brain areas and quantifies each of their volumes. These results are compared to a normative database and can easily be assessed by the radiologist through a color-coded deviation map and a quantitative overview. “From a clinical point of view, deviation maps are the most relevant for us. We primarily focus on them to support clinical diagnosis of dementia subtypes based on imaging phenotypes”, highlights Dr Máté Maros, University Medical Center, Mannheim, Germany. The AI-Rad Companion portfolio includes further offerings that use MRI images for AI-based image quantification. AI-Rad Companion Prostate MR for biopsy support automatically segments the prostate. He allows the manual annotations of lesions, which can support in targeted biopsies under MRI and Ultrasound fusion imaging. Targeted, MRI-supported biopsies like this can make it easier for the urologist to detect significant prostate carcinomas and improve patient care quality.
AI-Rad Companion Chest-CT
The first member of the AI-Rad Companion family was launched in 2018. The AI-Rad Companion Chest CT offers a bundle of algorithms that help measure, highlight and segment relevant anatomies and abnormalities of thoracic CT images of the lung, heart, vertebrae, and the aorta – all of them FDA-cleared and CE marked. The software automatically creates a standardized and quantitative report and sends its result to the reporting environment. “We processed 50 previously read studies as soon as we received AI-Rad Companion Chest CT. In 14% of the cases that were analyzed by the software, it delivered additional clinical valuable information that has not been noticed by the initial reading of the images”, states Dr. Ernesto Barrientos Manrique, Health Time Medica, Spain. “The findings in the remaining 86% of processed cases, were in line with the original reports submitted by our radiologists.”
All solutions in the AI-Rad Companion family are connected to the teamplay digital health platform. Applications in the cloud ensure that the customers’ clinical cases are processed securely and stably. Moreover, customers easily receive the latest up-to-date algorithms via the platform, and installation efforts are minimal.
