Xilinx and Spline.AI Develop X-Ray Classification Deep-Learning Model and Reference Design on AWS

Adaptive model enables medical equipment makers and healthcare service providers to rapidly develop trained models for clinical and radiological applications

SAN JOSE, Calif.-- Oct 13, 2020 -- Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), the leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, today introduced a fully functional medical X-ray classification deep-learning model and a reference design kit, in association with Spline.AI on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The high-performance model is deployed on the Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC device based ZCU104 and leverages the Xilinx deep learning processor unit (DPU), a soft-IP tensor accelerator, which is powerful enough to run a variety of neural networks, including classification and detection of diseases.

The collaboratively developed solution uses an open-source model, which runs on a Python programming platform on a Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC device, meaning it can be adapted by researchers to suit different application specific requirements. Medical diagnostic, clinical equipment makers and healthcare service providers can use the open-source design to rapidly develop and deploy trained models for many clinical and radiological applications in a mobile, portable or point-of-care edge device with the option to scale using the cloud.

To learn more about how the open-source design can be used to develop a radiology flow, please visit https://www.xilinx.com/applications/medical/healthcare-ai.html

“AI is one of the fastest growing and high demand application areas of healthcare, so we’re excited to share this adaptable, open-source solution with the industry,” said Kapil Shankar, vice president of marketing and business development, Core Markets Group at Xilinx. “The cost-effective solution offers low latency, power efficiency, and scalability. Plus, as the model can be easily adapted to similar clinical and diagnostic applications, medical equipment makers and healthcare providers are empowered to swiftly develop future clinical and radiological applications using the reference design kit.”

The solution’s artificial intelligence (AI) model is trained using Amazon SageMaker and is deployed from cloud to edge using AWS IoT Greengrass, enabling remote machine learning (ML) model updates, geographically distributed inference, and the ability to scale across remote networks and large geographies.

“We are delighted to support Xilinx design a solution for healthcare customers who are in need of ways to rapidly develop trained models for clinical and radiological applications,” said Dirk Didascalou, Vice President of IoT at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Amazon SageMaker enabled Xilinx and Spline.AI to develop a high-quality solution that can support highly accurate clinical diagnostics using low cost medical appliances. The integration of AWS IoT Greengrass enables physicians to easily upload X-ray images to the cloud without the need of a physical medical device, enabling physicians to extend the delivery care to more remote locations”

Syed Hussain, CTO at Spline.AI said: “Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoCs are Edge devices ideally suited for scalable deployment of high-performance deep-learning models in a clinical setting, such as the new COVID-XS model that we worked to train and develop for this collaborative effort.”

The solution has been used for a pneumonia and Covid-19 detection system, with incredibly high levels of accuracy and low inference latency. The development team leveraged over 30,000 curated and labeled pneumonia images and 500 Covid-19 images to train the deep learning models. This data is made available for public research by healthcare and research institutes such as National Institute of Health (NIH), Stanford University, and MIT, as well as other hospitals and clinics around the world.

About Xilinx

Xilinx develops highly flexible and adaptive processing platforms that enable rapid innovation across a variety of technologies – from the endpoint to the edge to the cloud. Xilinx is the inventor of the FPGA, hardware programmable SoCs, and the ACAP, designed to deliver the most dynamic processor technology in the industry and enable the adaptable, intelligent, and connected world of the future. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.