COVID-19 open source data sets: a comprehensive survey

Wrangling Real-World Data: Optimizing Clinical Research Through Factor Selection with LASSO Regression

Data-driven approaches to clinical research are necessary for understanding and effectively treating infectious diseases. However, challenges such as issues with data validity, lack of collaboration, and difficult-to-treat infectious diseases (e.g., those that are rare or newly emerging) hinder research. Prioritizing innovative methods to facilitate the continued use of data generated during routine clinical care for research, but in an organized, accelerated, and shared manner, is crucial. This study investigates the potential of CURE ID, an open-source platform to accelerate drug-repurposing research for difficult-to-treat diseases, with COVID-19 as a use case. Data from eight US health systems were analyzed using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression to identify key predictors of 28-day all-cause mortality in COVID-19 patients, including demographics, comorbidities, treatments, and laboratory measurements captured during the first two days of hospitalization. Key findings indicate that age, laboratory measures, severity of illness indicators, oxygen support administration, and comorbidities significantly influenced all-cause 28-day mortality, aligning with previous studies. This work underscores the value of collaborative repositories like CURE ID in providing robust datasets for prognostic research and the importance of factor selection in identifying key variables, helping to streamline future research and drug-repurposing efforts.

Rapid human movement and dengue transmission in Bangladesh: a spatial and temporal analysis based on different policy measures of COVID-19 pandemic and Eid festival

BACKGROUND

Rapid human movement plays a crucial role in the spatial dissemination of the dengue virus. Nevertheless, robust quantification of this relationship using both spatial and temporal models remains necessary. This study aims to explore the spatial and temporal patterns of dengue transmission under various human movement contexts.

METHODS

We obtained district-wise aggregated dengue incidence data from the Management Information System, Directorate General of Health Services of Bangladesh. The stringency index (SI), along with eight individual policy measures (from the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker database) and six mobility indices (as measured by Google's Community Mobility Reports) were obtained as human movement indicators. A multi-step correlative modelling approach, including various spatial and temporal models, was utilized to explore the associations of dengue incidence with the SI, fourteen human movement indices and the Eid festival.

RESULTS

The global Moran's I indicated significant spatial autocorrelation in dengue incidence during the pre-pandemic (Moran's I: 0.14, P < 0.05) and post-pandemic periods (Moran's I: 0.42, P < 0.01), while the pandemic period (2020-2022) showed weaker, non-significant spatial clustering (Moran's I: 0.07, P > 0.05). Following the pandemic, we identified the emergence of new dengue hotspots. We found a strong negative relationship between monthly dengue incidence and the SI (rspearman: - 0.62, P < 0.01). Through the selection of an optimal Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average model, we observed that the closure of public transport (β = - 1.66, P < 0.10) and restrictions on internal movement (β = - 2.13, P < 0.10) were associated with the reduction of dengue incidence. Additionally, observed cases were substantially lower than predicted cases during the period from 2020 to 2022. By utilising additional time-series models, we were able to identify in 2023 a rise in dengue incidence associated with the Eid festival intervention, even after adjusting for important climate variables.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, rapid human movement was found to be associated with increased dengue transmission in Bangladesh. Consequently, the implemention of effective mosquito control interventions prior to large festival periods is necessary for preventing the spread of the disease nationwide. We emphasize the necessity for developing advanced surveillance and monitoring networks to track real-time human movement patterns and dengue incidence.

Challenges issues and future recommendations of deep learning techniques for SARS-CoV-2 detection utilising X-ray and CT images: a comprehensive review

The global spread of SARS-CoV-2 has prompted a crucial need for accurate medical diagnosis, particularly in the respiratory system. Current diagnostic methods heavily rely on imaging techniques like CT scans and X-rays, but identifying SARS-CoV-2 in these images proves to be challenging and time-consuming. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) models, specifically deep learning (DL) networks, emerge as a promising solution in medical image analysis. This article provides a meticulous and comprehensive review of imaging-based SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis using deep learning techniques up to May 2024. This article starts with an overview of imaging-based SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, covering the basic steps of deep learning-based SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, SARS-CoV-2 data sources, data pre-processing methods, the taxonomy of deep learning techniques, findings, research gaps and performance evaluation. We also focus on addressing current privacy issues, limitations, and challenges in the realm of SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis. According to the taxonomy, each deep learning model is discussed, encompassing its core functionality and a critical assessment of its suitability for imaging-based SARS-CoV-2 detection. A comparative analysis is included by summarizing all relevant studies to provide an overall visualization. Considering the challenges of identifying the best deep-learning model for imaging-based SARS-CoV-2 detection, the article conducts an experiment with twelve contemporary deep-learning techniques. The experimental result shows that the MobileNetV3 model outperforms other deep learning models with an accuracy of 98.11%. Finally, the article elaborates on the current challenges in deep learning-based SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis and explores potential future directions and methodological recommendations for research and advancement.

Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare: A Journey through History, Present Innovations, and Future Possibilities

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool in healthcare significantly impacting practices from diagnostics to treatment delivery and patient management. This article examines the progress of AI in healthcare, starting from the field's inception in the 1960s to present-day innovative applications in areas such as precision medicine, robotic surgery, and drug development. In addition, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the acceleration of the use of AI in technologies such as telemedicine and chatbots to enhance accessibility and improve medical education is also explored. Looking forward, the paper speculates on the promising future of AI in healthcare while critically addressing the ethical and societal considerations that accompany the integration of AI technologies. Furthermore, the potential to mitigate health disparities and the ethical implications surrounding data usage and patient privacy are discussed, emphasizing the need for evolving guidelines to govern AI's application in healthcare.

Machine learning for healthcare that matters: Reorienting from technical novelty to equitable impact

Despite significant technical advances in machine learning (ML) over the past several years, the tangible impact of this technology in healthcare has been limited. This is due not only to the particular complexities of healthcare, but also due to structural issues in the machine learning for healthcare (MLHC) community which broadly reward technical novelty over tangible, equitable impact. We structure our work as a healthcare-focused echo of the 2012 paper "Machine Learning that Matters", which highlighted such structural issues in the ML community at large, and offered a series of clearly defined "Impact Challenges" to which the field should orient itself. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse and international group of authors, we engage in a narrative review and examine issues in the research background environment, training processes, evaluation metrics, and deployment protocols which act to limit the real-world applicability of MLHC. Broadly, we seek to distinguish between machine learning ON healthcare data and machine learning FOR healthcare-the former of which sees healthcare as merely a source of interesting technical challenges, and the latter of which regards ML as a tool in service of meeting tangible clinical needs. We offer specific recommendations for a series of stakeholders in the field, from ML researchers and clinicians, to the institutions in which they work, and the governments which regulate their data access.

Deep learning network selection and optimized information fusion for enhanced COVID‐19 detection

This study proposes a wrapper‐based technique to improve the classification performance of chest infection (including COVID‐19) detection using X‐rays. Deep features were extracted using pretrained deep learning models. Ten optimization techniques, including poor and rich optimization, path finder algorithm, Henry gas solubility optimization, Harris hawks optimization, atom search optimization, manta‐ray foraging optimization, equilibrium optimizer, slime mold algorithm, generalized normal distribution optimization, and marine predator algorithm, were used to determine the optimal features using a support vector machine. Moreover, a network selection technique was used to select the deep learning models. An online chest infection detection X‐ray scan dataset was used to validate the proposed approach. The results suggest that the proposed wrapper‐based automatic deep learning network selection and feature optimization framework has a high classification rate of 97.7%. The comparative analysis further validates the credibility of the framework in COVID‐19 and other chest infection classifications, suggesting that the proposed approach can help doctors in clinical practice.

A Comparison of ChatGPT and Fine-Tuned Open Pre-Trained Transformers (OPT) Against Widely Used Sentiment Analysis Tools: Sentiment Analysis of COVID-19 Survey Data

BACKGROUND

Health care providers and health-related researchers face significant challenges when applying sentiment analysis tools to health-related free-text survey data. Most state-of-the-art applications were developed in domains such as social media, and their performance in the health care context remains relatively unknown. Moreover, existing studies indicate that these tools often lack accuracy and produce inconsistent results.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to address the lack of comparative analysis on sentiment analysis tools applied to health-related free-text survey data in the context of COVID-19. The objective was to automatically predict sentence sentiment for 2 independent COVID-19 survey data sets from the National Institutes of Health and Stanford University.

METHODS

Gold standard labels were created for a subset of each data set using a panel of human raters. We compared 8 state-of-the-art sentiment analysis tools on both data sets to evaluate variability and disagreement across tools. In addition, few-shot learning was explored by fine-tuning Open Pre-Trained Transformers (OPT; a large language model [LLM] with publicly available weights) using a small annotated subset and zero-shot learning using ChatGPT (an LLM without available weights).

RESULTS

The comparison of sentiment analysis tools revealed high variability and disagreement across the evaluated tools when applied to health-related survey data. OPT and ChatGPT demonstrated superior performance, outperforming all other sentiment analysis tools. Moreover, ChatGPT outperformed OPT, exhibited higher accuracy by 6% and higher F-measure by 4% to 7%.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates the effectiveness of LLMs, particularly the few-shot learning and zero-shot learning approaches, in the sentiment analysis of health-related survey data. These results have implications for saving human labor and improving efficiency in sentiment analysis tasks, contributing to advancements in the field of automated sentiment analysis.

CCS-GAN: COVID-19 CT Scan Generation and Classification with Very Few Positive Training Images

We present a novel algorithm that is able to generate deep synthetic COVID-19 pneumonia CT scan slices using a very small sample of positive training images in tandem with a larger number of normal images. This generative algorithm produces images of sufficient accuracy to enable a DNN classifier to achieve high classification accuracy using as few as 10 positive training slices (from 10 positive cases), which to the best of our knowledge is one order of magnitude fewer than the next closest published work at the time of writing. Deep learning with extremely small positive training volumes is a very difficult problem and has been an important topic during the COVID-19 pandemic, because for quite some time it was difficult to obtain large volumes of COVID-19-positive images for training. Algorithms that can learn to screen for diseases using few examples are an important area of research. Furthermore, algorithms to produce deep synthetic images with smaller data volumes have the added benefit of reducing the barriers of data sharing between healthcare institutions. We present the cycle-consistent segmentation-generative adversarial network (CCS-GAN). CCS-GAN combines style transfer with pulmonary segmentation and relevant transfer learning from negative images in order to create a larger volume of synthetic positive images for the purposes of improving diagnostic classification performance. The performance of a VGG-19 classifier plus CCS-GAN was trained using a small sample of positive image slices ranging from at most 50 down to as few as 10 COVID-19-positive CT scan images. CCS-GAN achieves high accuracy with few positive images and thereby greatly reduces the barrier of acquiring large training volumes in order to train a diagnostic classifier for COVID-19.

A Survey on COVID-19 Data Analysis Using AI, IoT, and Social Media

Coronaviruses are a well-established and deadly group of viruses that cause illness in both humans and animals. The novel type of this virus group, named COVID-19, was firstly reported in December 2019, and, with the passage of time, coronavirus has spread to almost all parts of the world. Coronavirus has been the cause of millions of deaths around the world. Furthermore, many countries are struggling with COVID-19 and have experimented with various kinds of vaccines to eliminate the deadly virus and its variants. This survey deals with COVID-19 data analysis and its impact on human social life. Data analysis and information related to coronavirus can greatly help scientists and governments in controlling the spread and symptoms of the deadly coronavirus. In this survey, we cover many areas of discussion related to COVID-19 data analysis, such as how artificial intelligence, along with machine learning, deep learning, and IoT, have worked together to fight against COVID-19. We also discuss artificial intelligence and IoT techniques used to forecast, detect, and diagnose patients of the novel coronavirus. Moreover, this survey also describes how fake news, doctored results, and conspiracy theories were spread over social media sites, such as Twitter, by applying various social network analysis and sentimental analysis techniques. A comprehensive comparative analysis of existing techniques has also been conducted. In the end, the Discussion section presents different data analysis techniques, provides future directions for research, and suggests general guidelines for handling coronavirus, as well as changing work and life conditions.

Updates on drug designing approach through computational strategies: a review

The drug discovery and development (DDD) process in pursuit of novel drug candidates is a challenging procedure requiring lots of time and resources. Therefore, computer-aided drug design (CADD) methodologies are used extensively to promote proficiency in drug development in a systematic and time-effective manner. The point in reference is SARS-CoV-2 which has emerged as a global pandemic. In the absence of any confirmed drug moiety to treat the infection, the science fraternity adopted hit and trial methods to come up with a lead drug compound. This article is an overview of the virtual methodologies, which assist in finding novel hits and help in the progression of drug development in a short period with a specific medicinal solution.

Harnessing Machine Learning in Early COVID-19 Detection and Prognosis: A Comprehensive Systematic Review

During the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing faced limitations, prompting the exploration of machine learning (ML) alternatives for diagnosis and prognosis. Providing a comprehensive appraisal of such decision support systems and their use in COVID-19 management can aid the medical community in making informed decisions during the risk assessment of their patients, especially in low-resource settings. Therefore, the objective of this study was to systematically review the studies that predicted the diagnosis of COVID-19 or the severity of the disease using ML. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA), we conducted a literature search of MEDLINE (OVID), Scopus, EMBASE, and IEEE Xplore from January 1 to June 31, 2020. The outcomes were COVID-19 diagnosis or prognostic measures such as death, need for mechanical ventilation, admission, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. We included peer-reviewed observational studies, clinical trials, research letters, case series, and reports. We extracted data about the study's country, setting, sample size, data source, dataset, diagnostic or prognostic outcomes, prediction measures, type of ML model, and measures of diagnostic accuracy. Bias was assessed using the Prediction model Risk Of Bias ASsessment Tool (PROBAST). This study was registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO), with the number CRD42020197109. The final records included for data extraction were 66. Forty-three (64%) studies used secondary data. The majority of studies were from Chinese authors (30%). Most of the literature (79%) relied on chest imaging for prediction, while the remainder used various laboratory indicators, including hematological, biochemical, and immunological markers. Thirteen studies explored predicting COVID-19 severity, while the rest predicted diagnosis. Seventy percent of the articles used deep learning models, while 30% used traditional ML algorithms. Most studies reported high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for the ML models (exceeding 90%). The overall concern about the risk of bias was "unclear" in 56% of the studies. This was mainly due to concerns about selection bias. ML may help identify COVID-19 patients in the early phase of the pandemic, particularly in the context of chest imaging. Although these studies reflect that these ML models exhibit high accuracy, the novelty of these models and the biases in dataset selection make using them as a replacement for the clinicians' cognitive decision-making questionable. Continued research is needed to enhance the robustness and reliability of ML systems in COVID-19 diagnosis and prognosis.

Bibliometric analysis of the use of artificial intelligence in COVID-19 based on scientific studies

Background and Aims

One such strategy is citation analysis used by researchers for research planning an article referred to by another article receives a "citation." By using bibliometric analysis, the development of research areas and authors' influence can be investigated. The current study aimed to identify and analyze the characteristics of 100 highly cited articles on the use of artificial intelligence concerning COVID-19.

Methods

On July 27, 2022, this database was searched using the keywords "artificial intelligence" and "COVID-19" in the topic. After extensive searching, all retrieved articles were sorted by the number of citations, and 100 highly cited articles were included based on the number of citations. The following data were extracted: year of publication, type of study, name of journal, country, number of citations, language, and keywords.

Results

The average number of citations for 100 highly cited articles was 138.54. The top three cited articles with 745, 596, and 549 citations. The top 100 articles were all in English and were published in 2020 and 2021. China was the most prolific country with 19 articles, followed by the United States with 15 articles and India with 10 articles.

Conclusion

The current bibliometric analysis demonstrated the significant growth of the use of artificial intelligence for COVID-19. Using these results, research priorities are more clearly defined, and researchers can focus on hot topics.

Automated measurement of penile curvature using deep learning-based novel quantification method

Objective

Develop a reliable, automated deep learning-based method for accurate measurement of penile curvature (PC) using 2-dimensional images.

Materials and methods

A set of nine 3D-printed models was used to generate a batch of 913 images of penile curvature (PC) with varying configurations (curvature range 18° to 86°). The penile region was initially localized and cropped using a YOLOv5 model, after which the shaft area was extracted using a UNet-based segmentation model. The penile shaft was then divided into three distinct predefined regions: the distal zone, curvature zone, and proximal zone. To measure PC, we identified four distinct locations on the shaft that reflected the mid-axes of proximal and distal segments, then trained an HRNet model to predict these landmarks and calculate curvature angle in both the 3D-printed models and masked segmented images derived from these. Finally, the optimized HRNet model was applied to quantify PC in medical images of real human patients and the accuracy of this novel method was determined.

Results

We obtained a mean absolute error (MAE) of angle measurement <5° for both penile model images and their derivative masks. For real patient images, AI prediction varied between 1.7° (for cases of ∼30° PC) and approximately 6° (for cases of 70° PC) compared with assessment by a clinical expert.

Discussion

This study demonstrates a novel approach to the automated, accurate measurement of PC that could significantly improve patient assessment by surgeons and hypospadiology researchers. This method may overcome current limitations encountered when applying conventional methods of measuring arc-type PC.

Affective memories and perceived value: motivators and inhibitors of the data search-access process

Purpose

As an emerging tool for data discovery, data retrieval systems fail to effectively support users' cognitive processes during data search and access. To uncover the relationship between data search and access and the cognitive mechanisms underlying this relationship, this paper examines the associations between affective memories, perceived value, search effort and the intention to access data during users' interactions with data retrieval systems.

Design/methodology/approach

This study conducted a user experiment for which 48 doctoral students from different disciplines were recruited. The authors collected search logs, screen recordings, questionnaires and eye movement data during the interactive data search. Multiple linear regression was used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The results indicate that positive affective memories positively affect perceived value, while the effects of negative affective memories on perceived value are nonsignificant. Utility value positively affects search effort, while attainment value negatively affects search effort. Moreover, search effort partially positively affects the intention to access data, and it serves a full mediating role in the effects of utility value and attainment value on the intention to access data.

Originality/value

Through the comparison between the findings of this study and relevant findings in information search studies, this paper reveals the specificity of behaviour and cognitive processes during data search and access and the special characteristics of data discovery tasks. It sheds light on the inhibiting effect of attainment value and the motivating effect of utility value on data search and the intention to access data. Moreover, this paper provides new insights into the role of memory bias in the relationships between affective memories and data searchers' perceived value.

Rapid, sensitive, and specific detection of SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal swab samples of suspected patients using a novel one-step loop-mediated isothermal amplification (one-step LAMP) technique

BACKGROUND

In the absence of effective antiviral drugs or vaccines, early and accurate detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection is essential to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study developed and evaluated a novel rapid One-Step LAMP assay to directly detect the SARS-CoV-2 RNA from nasopharyngeal (NP) swab samples of patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection living in deprived areas in comparison to One-Step Real-time PCR.

METHODS

Two hundred fifty-four NP swab samples from patients suspected of COVID-19 infection living in deprived western areas of Iran were tested by TaqMan One-Step RT-qPCR and fast One-Step LAMP assays. Tenfold serial dilutions of SARS-CoV-2 RNA standard strain where the viral copy number in each dilution was previously determined using the qPCR and various templates were used to investigate the analytical sensitivity and specificity of the One-Step LAMP assay in triplicate. Also, the efficacy and reliability of the method compared to TaqMan One-Step RT-qPCR were evaluated using SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative clinical samples.

RESULTS

The results of the One-Step RT-qPCR and One-Step LAMP tests were positive in 131 (51.6%) and 127 (50%) participants, respectively. Based on Cohen's kappa coefficient (κ), the agreement between the two tests was 97%, which was statistically significant (P < 0.001). The detection limit for the One-Step LAMP assay was 1 × 10¹ copies of standard SARS-CoV-2 RNA per reaction in less than an hour in triplicates. Negative results in all samples with non-SARS-CoV-2 templates represent 100% specificity.

CONCLUSIONS

The results showed that the One-Step LAMP assay is an efficient consistent technique for detecting SARS-CoV-2 among suspected individuals due to its simplicity, speed, low cost, sensitivity, and specificity. Therefore, it has great potential as a useful diagnostic tool for disease epidemic control, timely treatment, and public health protection, especially in poor and underdeveloped countries.

MSCCov19Net: multi-branch deep learning model for COVID-19 detection from cough sounds

Coronavirus has an impact on millions of lives and has been added to the important pandemics that continue to affect with its variants. Since it is transmitted through the respiratory tract, it has had significant effects on public health and social relations. Isolating people who are COVID positive can minimize the transmission, therefore several exams are proposed to detect the virus such as reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), chest X-Ray, and computed tomography (CT). However, these methods suffer from either a low detection rate or high radiation dosage, along with being expensive. In this study, deep neural network-based model capable of detecting coronavirus from only coughing sound, which is fast, remotely operable and has no harmful side effects, has been proposed. The proposed multi-branch model takes M el Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), S pectrogram, and C hromagram as inputs and is abbreviated as MSCCov19Net. The system is trained on publicly available crowdsourced datasets, and tested on two unseen (used only for testing) clinical and non-clinical datasets. Experimental outcomes represent that the proposed system outperforms the 6 popular deep learning architectures on four datasets by representing a better generalization ability. The proposed system has reached an accuracy of 61.5 % in Virufy and 90.4 % in NoCoCoDa for unseen test datasets.

Feature selection of pre-trained shallow CNN using the QLESCA optimizer: COVID-19 detection as a case study

According to the World Health Organization, millions of infections and a lot of deaths have been recorded worldwide since the emergence of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Since 2020, a lot of computer science researchers have used convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to develop interesting frameworks to detect this disease. However, poor feature extraction from the chest X-ray images and the high computational cost of the available models introduce difficulties for an accurate and fast COVID-19 detection framework. Moreover, poor feature extraction has caused the issue of 'the curse of dimensionality', which will negatively affect the performance of the model. Feature selection is typically considered as a preprocessing mechanism to find an optimal subset of features from a given set of all features in the data mining process. Thus, the major purpose of this study is to offer an accurate and efficient approach for extracting COVID-19 features from chest X-rays that is also less computationally expensive than earlier approaches. To achieve the specified goal, we design a mechanism for feature extraction based on shallow conventional neural network (SCNN) and used an effective method for selecting features by utilizing the newly developed optimization algorithm, Q-Learning Embedded Sine Cosine Algorithm (QLESCA). Support vector machines (SVMs) are used as a classifier. Five publicly available chest X-ray image datasets, consisting of 4848 COVID-19 images and 8669 non-COVID-19 images, are used to train and evaluate the proposed model. The performance of the QLESCA is evaluated against nine recent optimization algorithms. The proposed method is able to achieve the highest accuracy of 97.8086% while reducing the number of features from 100 to 38. Experiments prove that the accuracy of the model improves with the usage of the QLESCA as the dimensionality reduction technique by selecting relevant features.

Graphical abstract

Conventional and Novel Diagnostic Tools for the Diagnosis of Emerging SARS-CoV-2 Variants

Accurate identification at an early stage of infection is critical for effective care of any infectious disease. The "coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)" outbreak, caused by the virus "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)", corresponds to the current and global pandemic, characterized by several developing variants, many of which are classified as variants of concern (VOCs) by the "World Health Organization (WHO, Geneva, Switzerland)". The primary diagnosis of infection is made using either the molecular technique of RT-PCR, which detects parts of the viral genome's RNA, or immunodiagnostic procedures, which identify viral proteins or antibodies generated by the host. As the demand for the RT-PCR test grew fast, several inexperienced producers joined the market with innovative kits, and an increasing number of laboratories joined the diagnostic field, rendering the test results increasingly prone to mistakes. It is difficult to determine how the outcomes of one unnoticed result could influence decisions about patient quarantine and social isolation, particularly when the patients themselves are health care providers. The development of point-of-care testing helps in the rapid in-field diagnosis of the disease, and such testing can also be used as a bedside monitor for mapping the progression of the disease in critical patients. In this review, we have provided the readers with available molecular diagnostic techniques and their pitfalls in detecting emerging VOCs of SARS-CoV-2, and lastly, we have discussed AI-ML- and nanotechnology-based smart diagnostic techniques for SARS-CoV-2 detection.

Governing through big data: An ethnographic exploration of invisible lives in China's digital surveillance of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

Introduction/Background

Since 2020, China has implemented unprecedented digital health surveillance over citizens and residents in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. We explore the implementation of Health Code (jiankang ma), a contract-tracing and risk assessment app for coronavirus disease 2019, in China. By engaging with the concept of 'ocular ethics', we ask why and how some populations become invisible in China's Health Code surveillance system.

Methods

This study used an ethnographic approach to critically examine the role of digital technology in the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic governance. Three months of participant observation and 20 interviews were conducted to understand the design of Health Code and the situation of homeless population.

Results

We find that China's digital health surveillance during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has failed to cover the homeless population, who either fail to access Health Code or find ways to avoid its mandatory health surveillance. We further summarize four problems resulting in their exclusion, including the loss of ID cards, access to smartphones and phone numbers, problematic design and elastic surveillance, and the neglect of homeless community's precarious living situation.

Conclusion

Situating our work in the literature on theories of surveillance and anthropology of pandemics, we argue that without recognizing the structural problems embedded in homelessness, a large number of poor and homeless migrants are rendered invisible in this data-driven health surveillance, which further pushes them into social exclusion.

COVID-19 in Switzerland real-time epidemiological analyses powered by EpiGraphHub

Here we present the design and results of an analytical pipeline for COVID-19 data for Switzerland. It is applied to openly available data from the beginning of the epidemic in 2020 to the present day (august 2022). We analyzed the spatio-temporal patterns of the spread of SARS-CoV2 throughout the country, applying Bayesian inference to estimate population prevalence and hospitalization ratio. We also developed forecasting models to characterize the transmission dynamics for all the country's cantons taking into account their spatial correlations in COVID incidence. The two-week forecasts of new daily hospitalizations showed good accuracy, as reported herein. These analyses' raw data and live results are available on the open-source EpiGraphHub platform to support further studies.

A Statistical Non-Parametric data analysis for COVID-19 incidence data

BACKGROUND

The impact of COVID-19 on the Global scale is tremendously drastic. There are several types of research going on across the world simultaneously to understand and overcome this dire pandemic outbreak. This paper is purely a statistical study on a distinct set of datasets regarding COVID-19 in India. The motivation of this study is to provide an insight into the rapid growth of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India.

METHODS

The rapid growth of COVID-19 cases in India started in March 2020. The main objective of this paper is to provide a solid statistical model for the policymaker to handle this kind of pandemic situation in the near future with nonlinear data. In this paper, the data was got from 1st April to 29th November 2020. To come up with a solid statistical model, various nonlinear data such as confirmed COVID-19 cases, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, the total population (state-wise), the total area in km2 (state-wise), and the total rural and urban population count (state-wise) have been analyzed. In this paper, six different Generalized Additive Models (GAM) was identified after a thorough analysis of other researchers' (Xie and Zhu, 2020; Prata et al., 2020) findings.

RESULTS

In all perspectives, the results were identified and analyzed. The GAM model regarding total COVID-19 confirmed cases, total population, and the total rural population provides the best average fit of R2 value of 0.934. As the population value is quite high, the author has concise it using logarithm to provide the best p-value of 0.000542 and 0.001407 for a relation between the total number of COVID-19 cases regarding the total population and total rural population respectively.

Optimizing intra-facility crowding in Wi-Fi environments using continuous-time Markov chains

Various measures have been devised to reduce crowdedness and alleviate the transmission of COVID-19. In this study, we propose a method for reducing intra-facility crowdedness based on the usage of Wi-Fi networks. We analyze Wi-Fi logs generated continually in vast quantities in the ever-expanding wireless network environment to calculate the transition probabilities between the nodes and the mean stay time at each node. Subsequently, we model this data as a continuous-time Markov chain to determine the variance of the stationary distribution, which is used as a metric of intra-facility crowdedness. Therefore, we solved the optimization problem by using stay rate as a parameter and developed a numerical solution to minimize the intra-facility crowdedness. The optimization results demonstrate that the intra-facility crowding is reduced by approximately 30%. This solution can practically reduce intra-facility crowdedness as it adjusts people’s stay times without making any changes to their movements. We categorized Wi-Fi users into a set of classes using the k-means method and documented the behavioral characteristics of each class to help implement class-specific measures to reduce intra-facility crowdedness, thus enabling facility managers to implement effective countermeasures against crowdedness based on the circumstances. We present a detailed description of our computing environment and workflow used for the basic analysis of vast quantities of Wi-Fi logs. We believe this research will be useful for analysts and facility operators because we have used general-purpose data for analysis.

A user satisfaction model for mobile government services: a literature review

User satisfaction is essential for the success of an organisation. With the development of government service delivery through mobile platforms, a compatible measurement model must be found to measure user satisfaction with performing such services through a mobile government portal. Measuring user satisfaction with mobile government services is necessary nowadays due to the increasing popularity of smart devices. Research on mGovernment users' satisfaction is lacking, leading to difficulties in understanding users' expectations. In the present study, systematic literature reviews have been used to analyze users' satisfaction with mGovernment portals and propose a comprehensive model compatible with such contexts. The results show that government agencies can evaluate users' satisfaction using the proposed model of six quality constructs: usability, interaction, consistency, information, accessibility, and privacy and security. The study recommends improving the evaluation strategies of mGovernment portals regularly to ensure they fit with challenges. Measuring user satisfaction at mGovernment services encourages the user to perform the transactions through such online platforms, increasing the digitalization process and reducing the cost and efforts for both the service provider and end-users.

A comparative geolocation and text mining analysis of emotions and topics during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK

BACKGROUND

In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought great changes to public health, society and the economy. Social media provides a platform for people to discuss health concerns, living conditions and policies during the epidemic, which allows policy makers to use its contents to analyse the public emotions and attitudes for decision making.

OBJECTIVE

In this study, we aim to use deep learning-based methods to understand public emotions on topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK through a comparative geolocation and text mining analysis on Twitter.

METHODS

Over 500,000 tweets related to COVID-19 from 48 different cities in the UK were extracted, and the data cover the period of the last 2 years (from February 2020 to November 2021). We leveraged three advanced deep learning-based models: SenticNet 6 for sentiment analysis, SpanEmo for emotion recognition, and Combined Topic Modelling (CTM) for topic modelling to geospatially analyse the sentiment, emotion and topics of tweets in the UK.

RESULTS

According to the analysis, we observed a significant change in the number of tweets as the epidemiological situation and vaccination these two years. There was a sharp increase in the number of tweets from January 2020 to February 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the UK. Then, the number of tweets gradually declined from February 2020. Moreover, with the identification of the COVID-19 Omicron variant in the UK in November 2021, the number of tweets grew. Our findings reveal people's attitudes and emotions towards topics related to COVID-19. For sentiment, about 60% of tweets are positive, 20% neutral and 20% are negative. For emotion, people tend to express highly positive emotions in the beginning of 2020, while expressing highly negative emotions as the time changes towards the end of 2021. The topics are also changing during the pandemic.

CONCLUSIONS

Through large scale text mining of Twitter, our study found that there were meaningful differences in public emotions and topics regarding the COVID-19 pandemic among different UK cities. Furthermore, efficient location-based and time-based comparative analysis can be used to track people's thoughts, feelings and understand their behaviours. Based on our analysis, positive attitudes were common during the pandemic; optimism and anticipation were the dominant emotions. With the outbreak epidemiological change, the government developed control measures, vaccination policies and the topics also shifted over time. Overall, the proportion and expressions of emojis, sentiments, emotions and topics varied geographically and temporally. Therefore, our approach of exploring public emotions and topics on the pandemic from Twitter can potentially lead to informing how public policies are received in a particular geographical area.

IoT-Based COVID-19 Diagnosing and Monitoring Systems: A Survey

To date, the novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has infected millions and has caused the deaths of thousands of people around the world. At the moment, five antibodies, two from China, two from the U.S., and one from the UK, have already been widely utilized and numerous vaccines are under the trail process. In order to reach herd immunity, around 70% of the population would need to be inoculated. It may take several years to hinder the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Governments and concerned authorities have taken stringent measurements such as enforcing partial, complete, or smart lockdowns, building temporary medical facilities, advocating social distancing, and mandating masks in public as well as setting up awareness campaigns. Furthermore, there have been massive efforts in various research areas and a wide variety of tools, technologies and techniques have been explored and developed to combat the war against this pandemic. Interestingly, machine learning (ML) algorithms and internet of Things (IoTs) technology are the pioneers in this race. Up till now, several real-time and intelligent IoT-based COVID-19 diagnosing, and monitoring systems have been proposed to tackle the pandemic. In this article we have analyzed a wide range of IoTs technologies which can be used in diagnosing and monitoring the infected individuals and hotspot areas. Furthermore, we identify the challenges and also provide our vision about the future research on COVID-19.

Asseri A, Binyamin SS, Al-Rabia MW. Enhanced Gravitational Search Optimization with Hybrid Deep Learning Model for COVID-19 Diagnosis on Epidemiology Data

Effective screening provides efficient and quick diagnoses of COVID-19 and could alleviate related problems in the health care system. A prediction model that combines multiple features to assess contamination risks was established in the hope of supporting healthcare workers worldwide in triaging patients, particularly in situations with limited health care resources. Furthermore, a lack of diagnosis kits and asymptomatic cases can lead to missed or delayed diagnoses, exposing visitors, medical staff, and patients to 2019-nCoV contamination. Non-clinical techniques including data mining, expert systems, machine learning, and other artificial intelligence technologies have a crucial role to play in containment and diagnosis in the COVID-19 outbreak. This study developed Enhanced Gravitational Search Optimization with a Hybrid Deep Learning Model (EGSO-HDLM) for COVID-19 diagnoses using epidemiology data. The major aim of designing the EGSO-HDLM model was the identification and classification of COVID-19 using epidemiology data. In order to examine the epidemiology data, the EGSO-HDLM model employed a hybrid convolutional neural network with a gated recurrent unit based fusion (HCNN-GRUF) model. In addition, the hyperparameter optimization of the HCNN-GRUF model was improved by the use of the EGSO algorithm, which was derived by including the concepts of cat map and the traditional GSO algorithm. The design of the EGSO algorithm helps in reducing the ergodic problem, avoiding premature convergence, and enhancing algorithm efficiency. To demonstrate the better performance of the EGSO-HDLM model, experimental validation on a benchmark dataset was performed. The simulation results ensured the enhanced performance of the EGSO-HDLM model over recent approaches.

Covid19/IT the digital side of Covid19: A picture from Italy with clustering and taxonomy

The Covid19 pandemic has significantly impacted on our lives, triggering a strong reaction resulting in vaccines, more effective diagnoses and therapies, policies to contain the pandemic outbreak, to name but a few. A significant contribution to their success comes from the computer science and information technology communities, both in support to other disciplines and as the primary driver of solutions for, e.g., diagnostics, social distancing, and contact tracing. In this work, we surveyed the Italian computer science and engineering community initiatives against the Covid19 pandemic. The 128 responses thus collected document the response of such a community during the first pandemic wave in Italy (February-May 2020), through several initiatives carried out by both single researchers and research groups able to promptly react to Covid19, even remotely. The data obtained by the survey are here reported, discussed and further investigated by Natural Language Processing techniques, to generate semantic clusters based on embedding representations of the surveyed activity descriptions. The resulting clusters have been then used to extend an existing Covid19 taxonomy with the classification of related research activities in computer science and information technology areas, summarizing this work contribution through a reproducible survey-to-taxonomy methodology.

Sentiment Analysis of Users’ Reactions on Social Media During the Pandemic

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, social networks became the preeminent medium for communication, social discussion, and entertainment. Social network users are regularly expressing their opinions about the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, social networks serve as a reliable source for studying the topics, emotions, and attitudes of users that have been discussed during the pandemic. In this paper, we investigate the reactions and attitudes of people towards topics raised on social media platforms. We collected data of two large-scale COVID-19 datasets from Twitter and Instagram for six and three months, respectively. This paper analyzes the reaction of social network users in terms of different aspects including sentiment analysis, topic detection, emotions, and the geo-temporal characteristics of our dataset. We show that the dominant sentiment reactions on social media are neutral, while the most discussed topics by social network users are about health issues. This paper examines the countries that attracted a higher number of posts and reactions from people, as well as the distribution of health-related topics discussed in the most mentioned countries. We shed light on the temporal shift of topics over countries. Our results show that posts from the top-mentioned countries influence and attract more reactions worldwide than posts from other parts of the world.

Current Artificial Intelligence (AI) Techniques, Challenges, and Approaches in Controlling and Fighting COVID-19: A Review

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has been one of the worst global health crises in the 21st century. The currently available rollout vaccines are not 100% effective for COVID-19 due to the evolving nature of the virus. There is a real need for a concerted effort to fight the virus, and research from diverse fields must contribute. Artificial intelligence-based approaches have proven to be significantly effective in every branch of our daily lives, including healthcare and medical domains. During the early days of this pandemic, artificial intelligence (AI) was utilized in the fight against this virus outbreak and it has played a major role in containing the spread of the virus. It provided innovative opportunities to speed up the development of disease interventions. Several methods, models, AI-based devices, robotics, and technologies have been proposed and utilized for diverse tasks such as surveillance, spread prediction, peak time prediction, classification, hospitalization, healthcare management, heath system capacity, etc. This paper attempts to provide a quick, concise, and precise survey of the state-of-the-art AI-based techniques, technologies, and datasets used in fighting COVID-19. Several domains, including forecasting, surveillance, dynamic times series forecasting, spread prediction, genomics, compute vision, peak time prediction, the classification of medical imaging-including CT and X-ray and how they can be processed-and biological data (genome and protein sequences) have been investigated. An overview of the open-access computational resources and platforms is given and their useful tools are pointed out. The paper presents the potential research areas in AI and will thus encourage researchers to contribute to fighting against the virus and aid global health by slowing down the spread of the virus. This will be a significant contribution to help minimize the high death rate across the globe.

Statistical analysis of blood characteristics of COVID-19 patients and their survival or death prediction using machine learning algorithms

This study's main purpose is to provide helpful information using blood samples from COVID-19 patients as a non-medical approach for helping healthcare systems during the pandemic. Also, this paper aims to evaluate machine learning algorithms for predicting the survival or death of COVID-19 patients. We use a blood sample dataset of 306 infected patients in Wuhan, China, compiled by Tangji Hospital. The dataset consists of blood's clinical indicators and information about whether patients are recovering or not. The used methods include K-nearest neighbor (KNN), decision tree (DT), logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), stochastic gradient descent (SGD), bagging classifier (BC), and adaptive boosting (AdaBoost). We compare the performance of machine learning algorithms using statistical hypothesis testing. The results show that the most critical feature is age, and there is a high correlation between LD and CRP, and leukocytes and CRP. Furthermore, RF, SVM, DT, AdaBoost, DT, and KNN outperform other machine learning algorithms in predicting the survival or death of COVID-19 patients.

J, Mohan S, Ahmadian A, Ciano T. A hybrid learning approach for the stage‐wise classification and prediction of COVID‐19 X‐ray images

Background

The COVID‐19 pandemic has precipitated global apprehensions about increased fatalities and raised concerns about gaps in healthcare infrastructure and accessibility the world over. Consequently, the importance of timely prediction and treatment of the disease to reduce transmission and mortality rates cannot be emphasized enough. Various symptoms of the disease have been identified as it progresses from the time it is contracted. COVID‐19 has been found to internally affect the lungs, and the four progressive stages of the infection can be categorized as mild, moderate, severe, and critical. Therefore, an accurate analysis of the current stage of the disease that can help predict its progression has become critical. X‐ray imaging has been found to be an effective screening procedure for predicting the various stages of this epidemic. Although many different approaches using machine learning, as well as deep learning were utilized to predict and classify diseases in general, till date, such an approach has not been used to predict the various stages of COVID‐19 by using X‐ray imaging to identify and classify those stages.

Materials and method

The proposed hybrid method used three public datasets for its implementation. In this work, extensive images were used for the purposes of testing and training. The dataset‐1 consists of 1200 COVID‐19 as well as 1200 Non‐COVID‐19 images, while dataset‐2 used 700 COVID‐19 as well as 700 Non‐COVID‐19 images, and finally, dataset‐III utilized 1900 COVID‐19 as well as 1900 Non‐COVID‐19 images for purposes of testing and training. The proposed work undertook the task of pre‐processing using textual and morphological features, while the segmentation and prediction of COVID‐19 as well as Non‐COVID‐19 images were undertaken using VGG‐16 with light GBM for better prediction and handing of huge datasets, and finally, the classification of the various stages of COVID‐19 images was performed using Deep Belief Network.

Results

The outcomes of the proposed work were subjected to several iterations which were then compared using different parameters such as accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity. In general, the prediction and grouping of the various stages of COVID‐19 by using affected images were found to be 99.2%, 99.4% and 99.5%, respectively. The bacterial pneumonia prediction rates were observed to be 98.5%, 99.4% and 98.3%, respectively. The average classification of the stages were found to be 98.1%, 98.6% and 98.3%, while the combined multi‐classification prediction rates were observed to be 98.6%, 99.1% and 98.7%, respectively.

Knowledge graph analysis and visualization of AI technology applied in COVID-19

With the global outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) all over the world, artificial intelligence (AI) technology is widely used in COVID-19 and has become a hot topic. In recent 2 years, the application of AI technology in COVID-19 has developed rapidly, and more than 100 relevant papers are published every month. In this paper, we combined with the bibliometric and visual knowledge map analysis, used the WOS database as the sample data source, and applied VOSviewer and CiteSpace analysis tools to carry out multi-dimensional statistical analysis and visual analysis about 1903 pieces of literature of recent 2 years (by the end of July this year). The data is analyzed by several terms with the main annual article and citation count, major publication sources, institutions and countries, their contribution and collaboration, etc. Since last year, the research on the COVID-19 has sharply increased; especially the corresponding research fields combined with the AI technology are expanding, such as medicine, management, economics, and informatics. The China and USA are the most prolific countries in AI applied in COVID-19, which have made a significant contribution to AI applied in COVID-19, as the high-level international collaboration of countries and institutions is increasing and more impactful. Moreover, we widely studied the issues: detection, surveillance, risk prediction, therapeutic research, virus modeling, and analysis of COVID-19. Finally, we put forward perspective challenges and limits to the application of AI in the COVID-19 for researchers and practitioners to facilitate future research on AI applied in COVID-19.

Blockchain for deep learning: review and open challenges

Deep learning has gained huge traction in recent years because of its potential to make informed decisions. A large portion of today's deep learning systems are based on centralized servers and fall short in providing operational transparency, traceability, reliability, security, and trusted data provenance features. Also, training deep learning models by utilizing centralized data is vulnerable to the single point of failure problem. In this paper, we explore the importance of integrating blockchain technology with deep learning. We review the existing literature focused on the integration of blockchain with deep learning. We classify and categorize the literature by devising a thematic taxonomy based on seven parameters; namely, blockchain type, deep learning models, deep learning specific consensus protocols, application area, services, data types, and deployment goals. We provide insightful discussions on the state-of-the-art blockchain-based deep learning frameworks by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, we compare the existing blockchain-based deep learning frameworks based on four parameters such as blockchain type, consensus protocol, deep learning method, and dataset. Finally, we present important research challenges which need to be addressed to develop highly trustworthy deep learning frameworks.

Contribution of Deep-Learning Techniques Toward Fighting COVID-19: A Bibliometric Analysis of Scholarly Production During 2020

COVID-19 has dramatically affected various aspects of human society with worldwide repercussions. Firstly, a serious public health issue has been generated, resulting in millions of deaths. Also, the global economy, social coexistence, psychological status, mental health, and the human-environment relationship/dynamics have been seriously affected. Indeed, abrupt changes in our daily lives have been enforced, starting with a mandatory quarantine and the application of biosafety measures. Due to the magnitude of these effects, research efforts from different fields were rapidly concentrated around the current pandemic to mitigate its impact. Among these fields, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) have supported many research papers to help combat COVID-19. The present work addresses a bibliometric analysis of this scholarly production during 2020. Specifically, we analyse quantitative and qualitative indicators that give us insights into the factors that have allowed papers to reach a significant impact on traditional metrics and alternative ones registered in social networks, digital mainstream media, and public policy documents. In this regard, we study the correlations between these different metrics and attributes. Finally, we analyze how the last DL advances have been exploited in the context of the COVID-19 situation.

Proposing a novel deep network for detecting COVID-19 based on chest images

The rapid outbreak of coronavirus threatens humans' life all around the world. Due to the insufficient diagnostic infrastructures, developing an accurate, efficient, inexpensive, and quick diagnostic tool is of great importance. To date, researchers have proposed several detection models based on chest imaging analysis, primarily based on deep neural networks; however, none of which could achieve a reliable and highly sensitive performance yet. Therefore, the nature of this study is primary epidemiological research that aims to overcome the limitations mentioned above by proposing a large-scale publicly available dataset of chest computed tomography scan (CT-scan) images consisting of more than 13k samples. Secondly, we propose a more sensitive deep neural networks model for CT-scan images of the lungs, providing a pixel-wise attention layer on top of the high-level features extracted from the network. Moreover, the proposed model is extended through a transfer learning approach for being applicable in the case of chest X-Ray (CXR) images. The proposed model and its extension have been trained and evaluated through several experiments. The inclusion criteria were patients with suspected PE and positive real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for SARS-CoV-2. The exclusion criteria were negative or inconclusive RT-PCR and other chest CT indications. Our model achieves an AUC score of 0.886, significantly better than its closest competitor, whose AUC is 0.843. Moreover, the obtained results on another commonly-used benchmark show an AUC of 0.899, outperforming related models. Additionally, the sensitivity of our model is 0.858, while that of its closest competitor is 0.81, explaining the efficiency of pixel-wise attention strategy in detecting coronavirus. Our promising results and the efficiency of the models imply that the proposed models can be considered reliable tools for assisting doctors in detecting coronavirus.

Identifying COVID-19 by using spectral analysis of cough recordings: a distinctive classification study

Sound signals from the respiratory system are largely taken as tokens of human health. Early diagnosis of respiratory tract diseases is of great importance because, if delayed, it exerts irreversible effects on human health. The Coronavirus pandemic, which is deeply shaking the world, has revealed the importance of this diagnosis even more. During the pandemic, it has become the focus of researchers to differentiate symptoms from similar diseases such as influenza. Among these symptoms, the difference in cough sound played a distinctive role in research. Clinical data collected under the supervision of doctors in a reliable environment were used as the dataset consisting of 16 subjects suspected of COVID-19 with a specific patient demographic. Using the polymerase chain reaction test, the suspected subjects were divided into two groups as negative and positive. The negative and positive labels represent the patients with non-COVID and with a COVID-19 cough, respectively. Using the 3D plot or waterfall representation of the signal frequency spectrum, the salient features of the cough data are revealed. In this way, COVID-19 can be differentiated from other coughs by applying effective feature extraction and classification techniques. Power spectral density based on short-time Fourier transform and mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) were chosen as the efficient feature extraction method. From among the classification techniques, the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm was applied to the processed signals in order to identify and classify COVID-19 cough. In terms of results evaluation, the cough of subjects with COVID-19 was detected with 95.86% classification accuracy thanks to the radial basis function (RBF) kernel function of SVM and the MFCC method. The diagnosis of COVID-19 coughs was performed with 98.6% and 91.7% sensitivity and specificity, respectively.

Face mask recognition from audio: The MASC database and an overview on the mask challenge

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in tough challenges for the field of biometrics due to its spread via physical contact, and the regulations of wearing face masks. Given these constraints, voice biometrics can offer a suitable contact-less biometric solution; they can benefit from models that classify whether a speaker is wearing a mask or not. This article reviews the Mask Sub-Challenge (MSC) of the INTERSPEECH 2020 COMputational PARalinguistics challengE (ComParE), which focused on the following classification task: Given an audio chunk of a speaker, classify whether the speaker is wearing a mask or not. First, we report the collection of the Mask Augsburg Speech Corpus (MASC) and the baseline approaches used to solve the problem, achieving a performance of 71.8 % Unweighted Average Recall (UAR). We then summarise the methodologies explored in the submitted and accepted papers that mainly used two common patterns: (i) phonetic-based audio features, or (ii) spectrogram representations of audio combined with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) typically used in image processing. Most approaches enhance their models by adapting ensembles of different models and attempting to increase the size of the training data using various techniques. We review and discuss the results of the participants of this sub-challenge, where the winner scored a UAR of 80.1 % . Moreover, we present the results of fusing the approaches, leading to a UAR of 82.6 % . Finally, we present a smartphone app that can be used as a proof of concept demonstration to detect in real-time whether users are wearing a face mask; we also benchmark the run-time of the best models.

Machine intelligence in non-invasive endocrine cancer diagnostics

Artificial intelligence (AI) has illuminated a clear path towards an evolving health-care system replete with enhanced precision and computing capabilities. Medical imaging analysis can be strengthened by machine learning as the multidimensional data generated by imaging naturally lends itself to hierarchical classification. In this Review, we describe the role of machine intelligence in image-based endocrine cancer diagnostics. We first provide a brief overview of AI and consider its intuitive incorporation into the clinical workflow. We then discuss how AI can be applied for the characterization of adrenal, pancreatic, pituitary and thyroid masses in order to support clinicians in their diagnostic interpretations. This Review also puts forth a number of key evaluation criteria for machine learning in medicine that physicians can use in their appraisals of these algorithms. We identify mitigation strategies to address ongoing challenges around data availability and model interpretability in the context of endocrine cancer diagnosis. Finally, we delve into frontiers in systems integration for AI, discussing automated pipelines and evolving computing platforms that leverage distributed, decentralized and quantum techniques.

Addressing Challenges of Distance Learning in the Pandemic with Edge Intelligence Enabled Multicast and Caching Solution

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world socially and economically changing behaviors towards medical facilities, public gatherings, workplaces, and education. Educational institutes have been shutdown sporadically across the globe forcing teachers and students to adopt distance learning techniques. Due to the closure of educational institutes, work and learn from home methods have burdened the network resources and considerably decreased a viewer's Quality of Experience (QoE). The situation calls for innovative techniques to handle the surging load of video traffic on cellular networks. In the scenario of distance learning, there is ample opportunity to realize multi-cast delivery instead of a conventional unicast. However, the existing 5G architecture does not support service-less multi-cast. In this article, we advance the case of Virtual Network Function (VNF) based service-less architecture for video multicast. Multicasting a video session for distance learning significantly lowers the burden on core and Radio Access Networks (RAN) as demonstrated by evaluation over a real-world dataset. We debate the role of Edge Intelligence (EI) for enabling multicast and edge caching for distance learning to complement the performance of the proposed VNF architecture. EI offers the determination of users that are part of a multicast session based on location, session, and cell information. Moreover, user preferences and network's contextual information can differentiate between live and cached access patterns optimizing edge caching decisions. While exploring the opportunities of EI-enabled distance learning, we demonstrate a significant reduction in network operator resource utilization and an increase in user QoE for VNF based multicast transmission.

COVID-19 disease diagnosis with light-weight CNN using modified MFCC and enhanced GFCC from human respiratory sounds

In the last 2 years, medical researchers and clinical scientists have paid close attention to the problem of respiratory sound classification to classify COVID-19 disease symptoms. In the physical world, very few AI-based (Artificial Intelligence) techniques are often used to detect COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 respiratory disease symptoms from the human respiratory system-generated acoustic sounds such as acoustic voice sound, breathing (inhale and exhale) sounds, and cough sound. We propose a light-weight Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with Modified-Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficient (M-MFCC) using different depths and kernel sizes to classify COVID-19 and other respiratory sound disease symptoms such as Asthma, Pertussis, and Bronchitis. The proposed network outperforms conventional feature extraction models and existing Deep Learning (DL) models for COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 classification accuracy in the range of 4-10%. The model's performance is compared with the COVID-19 crowdsourced benchmark dataset and gives a competitive performance. We applied different receptive fields and depths in the proposed model to get different contextual information that should aid in classification. And our experiments suggested 1 × 12 receptive fields and a depth of 5-Layer for the light-weight CNN to extract and identify the features from respiratory sound data. The model is also trained and tested with different modalities of data to showcase its effectiveness in classification.

Viral outbreaks detection and surveillance using wastewater-based epidemiology, viral air sampling, and machine learning techniques: A comprehensive review and outlook

A viral outbreak is a global challenge that affects public health and safety. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading globally, affecting millions of people worldwide, and led to significant loss of lives and deterioration of the global economy. The current adverse effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic demands finding new detection methods for future viral outbreaks. The environment's transmission pathways include and are not limited to air, surface water, and wastewater environments. The wastewater surveillance, known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), can potentially monitor viral outbreaks and provide a complementary clinical testing method. Another investigated outbreak surveillance technique that has not been yet implemented in a sufficient number of studies is the surveillance of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the air. Artificial intelligence (AI) and its related machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) technologies are currently emerging techniques for detecting viral outbreaks using global data. To date, there are no reports that illustrate the potential of using WBE with AI to detect viral outbreaks. This study investigates the transmission pathways of SARS-CoV-2 in the environment and provides current updates on the surveillance of viral outbreaks using WBE, viral air sampling, and AI. It also proposes a novel framework based on an ensemble of ML and DL algorithms to provide a beneficial supportive tool for decision-makers. The framework exploits available data from reliable sources to discover meaningful insights and knowledge that allows researchers and practitioners to build efficient methods and protocols that accurately monitor and detect viral outbreaks. The proposed framework could provide early detection of viruses, forecast risk maps and vulnerable areas, and estimate the number of infected citizens.

Automatic COVID-19 detection mechanisms and approaches from medical images: a systematic review

Since early 2020, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread widely around the world. COVID-19 infects the lungs, leading to breathing difficulties. Early detection of COVID-19 is important for the prevention and treatment of pandemic. Numerous sources of medical images (e.g., Chest X-Rays (CXR), Computed Tomography (CT), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)) are regarded as a desirable technique for diagnosing COVID-19 cases. Medical images of coronavirus patients show that the lungs are filled with sticky mucus that prevents them from inhaling. Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based algorithms have made a significant shift in the computer aided diagnosis due to their effective feature extraction capabilities. In this survey, a complete and systematic review of the application of Machine Learning (ML) methods for the detection of COVID-19 is presented, focused on works that used medical images. We aimed to evaluate various ML-based techniques in detecting COVID-19 using medical imaging. A total of 26 papers were extracted from ACM, ScienceDirect, Springerlink, Tech Science Press, and IEEExplore. Five different ML categories to review these mechanisms are considered, which are supervised learning-based, deep learning-based, active learning-based, transfer learning-based, and evolutionary learning-based mechanisms. A number of articles are investigated in each group. Also, some directions for further research are discussed to improve the detection of COVID-19 using ML techniques in the future. In most articles, deep learning is used as the ML method. Also, most of the researchers used CXR images to diagnose COVID-19. Most articles reported accuracy of the models to evaluate model performance. The accuracy of the studied models ranged from 0.84 to 0.99. The studies demonstrated the current status of AI techniques in using AI potentials in the fight against COVID-19.

Application of machine learning in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic: A review

Introduction: Machine learning (ML) plays a significant role in the fight against the COVID-19 (officially known as SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. ML techniques enable the rapid detection of patterns and trends in large datasets. Therefore, ML provides efficient methods to generate knowledge from structured and unstructured data. This potential is particularly significant when the pandemic affects all aspects of human life. It is necessary to collect a large amount of data to identify methods to prevent the spread of infection, early detection, reduction of consequences, and finding appropriate medicine. Modern information and communication technologies (ICT) such as the Internet of Things (IoT) allow the collection of large amounts of data from various sources. Thus, we can create predictive ML-based models for assessments, predictions, and decisions. Methods: This is a review article based on previous studies and scientifically proven knowledge. In this paper, bibliometric data from authoritative databases of research publications (Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed) are combined for bibliometric analyses in the context of ML applications for COVID-19. Aim: This paper reviews some ML-based applications used for mitigating COVID-19. We aimed to identify and review ML potentials and solutions for mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to present some of the most commonly used ML techniques, algorithms, and datasets applied in the context of COVID-19. Also, we provided some insights into specific emerging ideas and open issues to facilitate future research. Conclusion: ML is an effective tool for diagnosing and early detection of symptoms, predicting the spread of a pandemic, developing medicines and vaccines, etc.

Public Covid-19 X-ray datasets and their impact on model bias - A systematic review of a significant problem

Computer-aided-diagnosis and stratification of COVID-19 based on chest X-ray suffers from weak bias assessment and limited quality-control. Undetected bias induced by inappropriate use of datasets, and improper consideration of confounders prevents the translation of prediction models into clinical practice. By adopting established tools for model evaluation to the task of evaluating datasets, this study provides a systematic appraisal of publicly available COVID-19 chest X-ray datasets, determining their potential use and evaluating potential sources of bias. Only 9 out of more than a hundred identified datasets met at least the criteria for proper assessment of risk of bias and could be analysed in detail. Remarkably most of the datasets utilised in 201 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, are not among these 9 datasets, thus leading to models with high risk of bias. This raises concerns about the suitability of such models for clinical use. This systematic review highlights the limited description of datasets employed for modelling and aids researchers to select the most suitable datasets for their task.

Role of Artificial Intelligence in COVID-19 Detection

The global pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused millions of deaths and affected the livelihood of many more people. Early and rapid detection of COVID-19 is a challenging task for the medical community, but it is also crucial in stopping the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Prior substantiation of artificial intelligence (AI) in various fields of science has encouraged researchers to further address this problem. Various medical imaging modalities including X-ray, computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound (US) using AI techniques have greatly helped to curb the COVID-19 outbreak by assisting with early diagnosis. We carried out a systematic review on state-of-the-art AI techniques applied with X-ray, CT, and US images to detect COVID-19. In this paper, we discuss approaches used by various authors and the significance of these research efforts, the potential challenges, and future trends related to the implementation of an AI system for disease detection during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A repeated-measures study on emotional responses after a year in the pandemic

The introduction of COVID-19 lockdown measures and an outlook on return to normality are demanding societal changes. Among the most pressing questions is how individuals adjust to the pandemic. This paper examines the emotional responses to the pandemic in a repeated-measures design. Data (n = 1698) were collected in April 2020 (during strict lockdown measures) and in April 2021 (when vaccination programmes gained traction). We asked participants to report their emotions and express these in text data. Statistical tests revealed an average trend towards better adjustment to the pandemic. However, clustering analyses suggested a more complex heterogeneous pattern with a well-coping and a resigning subgroup of participants. Linguistic computational analyses uncovered that topics and n-gram frequencies shifted towards attention to the vaccination programme and away from general worrying. Implications for public mental health efforts in identifying people at heightened risk are discussed. The dataset is made publicly available.

Computer Audition for Fighting the SARS-CoV-2 Corona Crisis-Introducing the Multitask Speech Corpus for COVID-19

Computer audition (CA) has experienced a fast development in the past decades by leveraging advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques. In particular, for its noninvasive and ubiquitous character by nature, CA-based applications in healthcare have increasingly attracted attention in recent years. During the tough time of the global crisis caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), scientists and engineers in data science have collaborated to think of novel ways in prevention, diagnosis, treatment, tracking, and management of this global pandemic. On the one hand, we have witnessed the power of 5G, Internet of Things, big data, computer vision, and artificial intelligence in applications of epidemiology modeling, drug and/or vaccine finding and designing, fast CT screening, and quarantine management. On the other hand, relevant studies in exploring the capacity of CA are extremely lacking and underestimated. To this end, we propose a novel multitask speech corpus for COVID-19 research usage. We collected 51 confirmed COVID-19 patients' in-the-wild speech data in Wuhan city, China. We define three main tasks in this corpus, i.e., three-category classification tasks for evaluating the physical and/or mental status of patients, i.e., sleep quality, fatigue, and anxiety. The benchmarks are given by using both classic machine learning methods and state-of-the-art deep learning techniques. We believe this study and corpus cannot only facilitate the ongoing research on using data science to fight against COVID-19, but also the monitoring of contagious diseases for general purpose.

Factors determining generalization in deep learning models for scoring COVID-CT images

The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired unprecedented data collection and computer vision modelling efforts worldwide, focused on the diagnosis of COVID-19 from medical images. However, these models have found limited, if any, clinical application due in part to unproven generalization to data sets beyond their source training corpus. This study investigates the generalizability of deep learning models using publicly available COVID-19 Computed Tomography data through cross dataset validation. The predictive ability of these models for COVID-19 severity is assessed using an independent dataset that is stratified for COVID-19 lung involvement. Each inter-dataset study is performed using histogram equalization, and contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization with and without a learning Gabor filter. We show that under certain conditions, deep learning models can generalize well to an external dataset with F1 scores up to 86%. The best performing model shows predictive accuracy of between 75% and 96% for lung involvement scoring against an external expertly stratified dataset. From these results we identify key factors promoting deep learning generalization, being primarily the uniform acquisition of training images, and secondly diversity in CT slice position.

An augmented multilingual Twitter dataset for studying the COVID-19 infodemic

This work presents an openly available dataset to facilitate researchers' exploration and hypothesis testing about the social discourse of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dataset currently consists of over 2.2 billions tweets (count as of September, 2021), from all over the world, in multiple languages. Tweets start from January 22, 2020, when the total cases of reported COVID-19 were below 600 worldwide. The dataset was collected using the Twitter API and by rehydrating tweets from other available datasets, data collection is ongoing as of the time of writing. To facilitate hypothesis testing and exploration of social discourse, the English and Spanish tweets have been augmented with state-of-the-art Twitter Sentiment and Named Entity Recognition algorithms. The dataset and the summary files provided allow researchers to avoid some computationally intensive analyses, facilitating more widespread use of social media data to gain insights on issues such as (mis)information diffusion, semantic networks, sentiments, and the evolution of COVID-19 discussions. In addition, the dataset provides an archive for researchers in the social sciences wishing to have access to a dataset covering the entire duration of the pandemic.