AI against COVID-19: Screening X-ray Images for COVID-19 Infections

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus, has generated an unprecedented global health crisis, with more than 2.7 million deaths worldwide. Do you want to contribute to the fight against this pandemic? IEEE SIGHT (Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology) of the Montreal Section, Vision and Image Processing Research Group of the University of Waterloo, and DarwinAI Corp. invite data scientists, students and professionals working on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to participate in a virtual competition to help medical researchers diagnose COVID-19 with chest X-ray (CXR) images. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the development of highly accurate yet practical AI solutions for detecting COVID-19 cases and, hopefully, accelerating the treatment of those who need it the most. Moreover, this AI for Good initiative will also allow us to take action on at least one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Good Health and Well-Being.

The competition is composed of 2 phases:

1. In the First Phase, the challenge consists of designing robust machine learning algorithms to predict if the subjects of study are either COVID-19 positive or COVID-19 negative. The dataset for this competition is the dataset curated by COVID-Net, a global open-source initiative launched by DarwinAI Corp., Canada, and Vision and Image Processing Research Group, University of Waterloo, Canada, for accelerating advancements in machine learning to aid healthcare workers around the world in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. More about the COVID-Net initiative and available open-source resources are available here.
2. In the Second Phase, the 10 top teams of the first phase will have the opportunity to refine their solution and submit a proposal for a follow-up project to positively impact society or the academic community.

This competition is organized in collaboration with the National Research Council Canada and co-hosted by the IEEE Young Professionals Affinity Groups of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver Sections, Vancouver Circuit and Systems (CAS) Technical Chapter, the Student Branches of INRS (Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique), the University of Toronto and Vancouver Simon Fraser University,  and WIE (Women In Engineering) Ottawa. It is also largely sponsored by Microsoft, and partially by the IEEE Canada Humanitarian Initiatives Committee and the IEEE Montreal Section.