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Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Sun Yat-sen University and Baidu Join Hands to Usher into a New Era of AI Application in Ophthalmology

Source: Publicity Division
Edited by Xianjing Wei




On October 31st, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the Ninth Group Study Session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee that artificial intelligence (AI) is an important driving force for a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation. On November 1st, “Baidu World 2018” kicked off in Beijing. The summit was themed with the current application and future development of AI in the whole industry, and focused on the application of AI in medical treatment. Professor Yizhi Liu, the director of Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center (ZOC), and Doctor Hongyan Li, CEO of Baidu, held a high-level dialogue and jointly launched the AI fundus screening machine.



Professor Yizhi Liu stated, “In China, about 80 million people suffer from ocular fundus diseases, and many cases of blindness can be avoided if timely treatment is received. However, most ophthalmologists are concentrated in hospitals of big cities. For people in countries or small cities, ocular fundus diseases are difficult to be diagnosed in an early stage because of the insufficient personnel in the primary level hospitals.” To help doctors in primary hospitals quickly master technical specifications and serve patients, Liu and his team published a standard fundus examination technique in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2015. Liu then said that now Baidu’s AI fundus screening machine could quickly screen a variety of fundus diseases, assist doctors in diagnosis, and generate diagnostic reports in a short time, whose bio-measurement and description of the important structure of fundus were accurate and conformed to professional diagnosis.



At present, cooperating with Baidu, Professor Liu’s team has applied this product to the primary hospitals in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, which works very well. Baidu and Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center are the top institutions in the field of Internet and ophthalmology in China respectively. The cooperation between them will promote the clinical application of AI diagnostic technologies.

In “Baidu Brain AI Forum”, Yan Huang, head of Baidu AI Doctor, which is a core department of Baidu’s AI innovative industry, and Professor Jin Yuan from ZOC, introduced the preliminary cooperation between the two parties. They would deepen cooperation in establishing precisely labeled ophthalmic imaging dataset and labeling standards, as well as clinical application and evaluation of AI technologies. Later, with the media bearing witness, the two parties signed a cooperation framework agreement to jointly open a new chapter in the development of AI medical applications.