LOOKING AHEAD: Technology Trends Driving Business Innovation
NTT DATA R&D experts continuously analyze real-world case studies and other sources to identify the most significant technology and societal trends that we believe will drive change over the next three to ten years. The Information Society Trends provide our perspective on the evolution of society and business. The Technology Trends summarize our views on innovative technologies and their impact on the world.
Case Studies
- Medical diagnostic imaging AI provides support to physicians
- Benefits of multimodal AI technology
- NTT DATA global AI challenge focused on economic effects of COVID-19
- Explainable AI & Human-AI Collaboration
- Creating Value With Spatial Computing
Medical diagnostic imaging AI provides support to physicians
Medical diagnostic imaging AI is a technology that supports physicians’ diagnostic work by analyzing patients’ medical imaging information such as X-rays, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans and Computed Tomography (CT) images. The technology has the ability of further identifying areas where an abnormality could be present on a patient.
However, improving efficiency through the introduction of IT remains challenging in today’s work. A chronic shortage and uneven regional distribution of radiologists who can perform diagnostic imaging persists even as the need for diagnosis using medical images continues to increase.
NTT DATA has performed experiments to demonstrate diagnostic imaging AI in various medical work by verifying the practicality of diagnostic technology and its effectiveness in creating efficiency. In particular, we confirmed that it had a high level of diagnostic accuracy in detecting kidney abnormalities at hospitals in the United States and Japan. Our research is ongoing to validate efficacy in other use cases.
This technology is expected to be effective in diagnosing COVID-19 as well. In collaboration with our partner company DeepTek in India, we are conducting experiments on diagnostic imaging AI supporting COVID-19 diagnosis in India. By using images from actual COVID-19 patients to perform algorithm tuning, we enhanced the accuracy of AI diagnosis.
In the future, we will collaborate with a large number of medical institutions to propose ways for the use of diagnostic imaging AI to help strengthen the systems of medical institutions in various countries, reduce the burden on physicians, and improve diagnostic processes at hospitals.
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Benefits of multimodal AI technology
The development of AI has made it possible to do things such as finding a face in a photograph and identifying it; automatically converting the content of a phone call into text; and automatically generating summaries of news articles quickly and with accuracy. Whereas ordinary AI technology performs processing using a single specific information source, human beings can take action while perceiving and utilizing various kinds of information from manifold sources.
Multimodal AI technology realizes AI that approaches human cognition and information utilization by finding new rules using various data forms as input. For example, it could be used to visualize infection risk through a combination of sensor data, etc., for more accurate automatic recognition of human contact points, which are difficult to judge on the basis of two-dimensional data like images alone.
Multimodal AI technology also is actively used in investigations of whether similar trademarks have been registered. It can perform similarity evaluations based not only on form but also on meaning, using two types of data such as an illustration or other image and a written explanation. NTT DATA aims to expand the range of intellectual activity that can be realized with AI by uncovering use cases for multimodal AI technology.
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NTT DATA global AI challenge focused on economic effects of COVID-19
Employees of NTT DATA in various countries and regions are participating in the NTT DATA Global AI Challenge as a way of improving their technology skills with their colleagues while also contributing to society. They are using the Kaggle platform to enhance their problem-solving abilities as data scientists and determine who can create the most accurate predictive model utilizing data analysis.
The theme of this year’s competition is predicting the economic effects of COVID-19. Now that it has become less expensive to launch rockets and has attracted private companies, the NTT DATA Global AI Challenge is taking on the challenge of predicting “future oil prices” as one economic indicator by searching for new possibilities in the utilization of data obtained from satellites based on night light (lighting status in the evening time period) in satellite images of cities around the world. By doing so, they plan to construct an economic predictive model of the “new normal” that can capture the rapidly changing business and social environment.
Through this challenge, more than 100 NTT DATA engineers can engage and exchange ideas by a method that is continuously implementable under conditions where gathering together in real places is difficult and contribute to solving social problems with IT utilizing new data. They will recycle value back into society as a whole by opening the thought-provoking predictive models to the public after the event concludes September 2020.
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Explainable AI & Human-AI Collaboration
With lower barriers to entry, AI is now being leveraged across a broad range of industries and organizations. However, the main impediment for its successful use is being addressed by explainable AI (XAI). XAI helps users to understand, trust and manage AI-produced outputs. The required explanations for XAI differ depending on specific tasks, abilities and expectations of the users.
NTT DATA is currently amassing important experiential knowledge of XAI by developing and implementing solutions for clients. For example, in an image search system, researchers are provided with a list of similar images according to his/her query, and XAI highlights the parts of the images that were used as determining factors for its result. By examining this detail to verify the results, users gain confidence in the AI output. Additionally, by understanding the reasoning behind the output, researchers can more effectively communicate their decisions. NTT DATA is creating a diverse collaboration between humans and AI while gaining essential experience in the selection of appropriate XAI models and alternative methods of explanation for specific applications.
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Creating Value With Spatial Computing
To recreate physical things within a digital world requires digitizing their positions and conditions. The analysis and utilization of such information is expanding the emerging field of research called spatial computing.
NTT DATA is working on spatial computing using analytics to extract and analyze data within a 3D space. This technology digitizes and records the type, condition and position of an object, then synthesizes the information with 3D maps generated from images captured using a standard camera. One of the promising applications for this technology is in social infrastructure research and maintenance. The value stems from automating the collection of elements across a wide region such as road conditions or traffic signs.
In the future, our goal is to detect and analyze data from people and/or things and position them in a real-time environment. By combining this data with precise 3D mapping, simulations of events such as natural disasters will become highly accurate. NTT DATA continues to create significant value by leveraging spatial computing technologies to solve societal and business challenges.
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Column
POST COVID-19 Accelerating Trends
The new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) continues to spread around the world, and many people who have been forced to change their behaviors are having a difficult time. So, what is the impact of COVID-19 on information technology (IT) trends? NTT DATA Technology Foresight provides a perspective of IT’s important role at this time, including the need to accelerate use of the latest advanced technologies, its growing influence in society, and the amplification of issues with IT adoption and usage under these circumstances.
