Deepwise's Whole-Lung AI Algorithm Team Sweeps Triple Crown at Tianchi Challenge, Wins Dual Grand Prizes in Pulmonary CT Multi-Sign Diagnosis Competition

In March 2014, Jack Ma, Chairman of the Board of Alibaba Group, launched the “Tianchi Big Data Competition” at Peking University. The initiative aims to create a premier international algorithm competition for researchers worldwide, challenging participants to leverage algorithms to address societal or business problems. Since the inaugural Golden League in 2015, the competition has attracted over 10,000 algorithm teams from around the globe, drawing significant attention from scientists and developers in China’s big data and machine learning sectors, and has become a major event in the field of algorithms.

At the recently concluded 2019 Tianchi Competition—Digital Human Body Track (Global Data Intelligence Competition 2019), Deepwise Medical achieved another remarkable victory. The technical team from the Deepwise Research Institute (Team LGD.CN) claimed the championship with a decisive margin. Previously, Deepwise Medical had already secured first place by a wide margin in both the preliminary and semifinal rounds. Throughout the competition, Deepwise Medical demonstrated unstoppable momentum, achieving a triple crown. Meanwhile, Deepwise Medical’s AI implementation solution received unanimous acclaim from the judges during the defense session, earning the prestigious Final Implementation Excellence Award.

In line with the original intent of the Tianchi Competition, this year’s “Digital Human” track aims to focus on critical pain points in healthcare, tackle world-class medical challenges, and advance disease diagnosis and treatment through algorithmic improvements. Centered on the intelligent diagnosis of multiple signs in lung CT scans, the competition challenges participants to address the more complex yet clinically significant issue of comprehensive intelligent diagnosis and treatment for various pulmonary diseases. The competition consists of three stages—preliminary, semi-final, and final—spanning two and a half months, during which participating teams are evaluated across multiple dimensions to assess their overall capabilities.

Deepwise Medical Champion Team

Tianchi Battle: Crowned Champion

The competition was launched on June 25, 2019, attracting 1,635 teams from 12 countries and regions worldwide. Leading domestic medical AI enterprises and university-based AI research institutions all sent teams to compete. Leveraging its robust core technological capabilities, Deepwise Medical maintained a leading position throughout the event, ultimately claiming the championship by securing first place in the preliminary, semi-final, and final rounds among the 1,635 participating teams. This impressive achievement is closely tied to its consistent accumulation of research and development in pulmonary disease products. For this competition, Deepwise Medical was guided by Chief Scientist Professor Yizhou Yu, an IEEE Fellow, and led by Dr. Wu Zifeng, Principal Investigator at the Deepwise Research Institute. In addition to their profound expertise in algorithm research, the team members’ long-term collaboration with clinicians laid a solid foundation for the final validation of their algorithmic models.

To ensure the objectivity of the competition and its coverage across multiple disciplines, eight senior experts from the medical and computer science fields were invited to serve as judges for the finals. The Deepwise team provided algorithmic support for the intelligent diagnosis of various pulmonary manifestations from a highly professional perspective, optimizing workflows and enhancing the speed and accuracy of disease diagnosis and treatment. Their flawless on-site performance received high acclaim from the expert judges.

Deepwise Medical Team Finals

Following the competition, Qin Rupei, Member of the Standing Committee of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Party Committee and Executive Vice Chairman of the Autonomous Region, along with Li Shuchong, Vice President of Alibaba Group, presented the championship award to Deepwise Healthcare.

"Tianchi Competition" Award Ceremony

Excellence in Strategy, Precision in Execution

To better promote the practical application and commercialization of research outcomes from the competition, the organizers specially established the Lean Excellence Award. Leveraging his team’s in-depth understanding of medical scenarios, Xu Jun, Director of Customer Operations at Deepwise Healthcare, provided a detailed on-site analysis of the implementation prospects for multi-disease detection in pulmonary care. Citing the company’s recently launched industry-first single-organ, multi-disease product—the Whole-Lung Multi-Disease Detection System—Xu Jun highlighted that Deepwise Healthcare’s whole-lung AI solutions have already been deployed in collaboration with numerous top-tier hospitals across China. These efforts are accelerating the translation of cutting-edge research into clinical practice, thereby enhancing services for medical care. Deepwise Healthcare’s implementation strategy received unanimous acclaim from the judging panel and ultimately won the competition’s Lean Excellence Award.

Xu Jun, Director of Customer Operations at Deepwise Medical

Targeting Pain Points: The Whole-Lung Era

Driven by factors such as climate change and environmental changes, the incidence of pulmonary diseases is on the rise. In clinical practice, radiologists are required to review hundreds of images from a single chest CT scan, making manual interpretation highly inefficient. Consequently, AI-assisted image interpretation is increasingly becoming an essential aid for physicians in disease diagnosis.

However, most current AI applications for chest CT are limited to the automated screening of a single finding—pulmonary nodules. In real-world hospital settings, the mere detection of pulmonary nodules cannot effectively address clinical diagnostic needs in a meaningful way.

Amid such clinical demands, Deepwise Dr. Wise^®The Whole-Lung AI-Assisted Medical Diagnostic System Has EmergedThis system has revolutionized the current landscape of AI applications in chest CT, which were previously limited to automated screening for pulmonary nodules, leaving other lung diseases reliant on manual diagnosis by physicians. It expands AI application from single-disease detection to multi-disease detection across a single anatomical region—the entire lung. The system covers conditions such as inflammatory lesions, nodules, tumors, emphysema, bullae, pleural effusion, and fractures, while supporting the entire diagnostic and therapeutic management workflow, including qualitative diagnosis, quantitative analysis, multi-time-point follow-up, and standardized structured reporting. This advancement marks the formal entry of AI-assisted chest CT diagnosis into the era of multi-disease auxiliary diagnosis for the lungs.

As the nation places increasing emphasis on the development and practical implementation of artificial intelligence (AI), deepening innovative applications of high-tech solutions in population health is driving the adoption of AI across various medical scenarios. As a leading enterprise in the medical AI sector, Deepwise Healthcare will remain true to its original mission and forge ahead with determination. As Qiao Xin, Co-founder and CEO of Deepwise Healthcare, stated at the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, “This is the best of times. Just as we have read about how Watt’s steam engine changed the world, in this era of artificial intelligence, we may well become witnesses to history, with the opportunity to see the entire world transformed by new technologies.”