LUSCOV - Lung sonography for Covid-19

In the LUSCOV project – the acronym stands for lung sonography for Covid-19 – Fraunhofer IGD and two other participating institutions, namely MedCom GmbH and Stiftung Rehabilitation Heidelberg (SHR) Wald-Klimikum Gera, are studying ultrasound image data of the lungs. The project’s goal is to perform more accurate analyses in order to gain a better understanding of how the pleura typically changes during the course of a Covid-19 infection with and many other lung diseases.

For this purpose, novel software tools are being developed at Fraunhofer IGD for analyzing and evaluating temporally resolved lung image data. The idea is to enable prognoses for individual patients and if possible also derive novel approaches for checking the lungs for different lung diseases. By automating the evaluation of lung ultrasound data, it is hoped that the repeatability of study results can be ensured, thus paving the way for time-efficiently managing the course of pneumonia cases in the context of everyday clinic work.

The lung ultrasound protocol of DEGUM (the acronym of the German Society for Ultrasound in Medicine) is being used to dynamically capture studied events. It paves the way for later standardization of the developed procedure.

The tools developed in the LUSCOV projects are intended to improve diagnoses while supporting and facilitating the work of less-experienced clinic personnel for evaluating patient data.