Artificial intelligence in veterinary medicine boosts efficiency and accuracy

Here’s a look at how AI can help you increase accuracy and efficiency at your veterinary practice.

Real-time care efficiency

The advanced technology available today is reshaping the way veterinarians and their teams work, boosting efficiency and improving real-time care. Imagine a workflow that reduces the need for you to identify cells using manual microscopy by automating the entire element identification process. With AI-backed veterinary technology, you can get accurate results from patient urine analysis within minutes.

This is what the SediVue Dx Urine Sediment Analyser offers. Its inverted microscope and high-quality digital camera generate images that are then evaluated by the analyser’s AI.

The analyser informs you of:

• The absence or presence of bacteria rods or cocci
• The types of cells present: it identifies red blood cells, white blood cells, squamous epithelial cells and non-squamous epithelial cells.
• The types of crystals present: it identifies calcium oxalate dihydrate, struvite, ammonium biurate and bilirubin, as well as atypical crystals.
• The types of cast present: it identifies hyaline and non-hyaline casts.

The analyser not only generates results fast, it also provides you with images you can use to educate your clients. With less time spent using manual microscopy, you and your team can dedicate more time to explaining the results to clients and treating patients.

Superior accuracy when diagnosing patients

In addition to increasing efficiency, diagnostic analysers are now being built with AI that provides unparalleled clinical insights. 

A complete blood count (CBC) is one of the most frequently run and relied on tests in veterinary medicine—so getting trustworthy, detailed, and accurate results is a priority. With the advancement of AI and machine learning techniques, blood cell identification methods are becoming faster and more accurate. What’s more, preprogrammed algorithms are being used to facilitate the identification of common abnormal patterns in CBC results.

The ProCyte One Haematology Analyser uses similar technology. Its AI uses the analyser’s sophisticated sensors to detect and assess sample information from five dimensions simultaneously: the four sensors in the laser, and the length of time it takes the laser to reach the object, otherwise known as the time of flight. It then takes the captured cell data and provides different views of each cell, allowing the cell populations to be separated without the interference of fragments or other cells. This translates to improved characterisation of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets, giving veterinarians additional insight into underlying haematological abnormalities.

The ProCyte One Analyser also considers patterns in results and provides you with comments for easier interpretation of results. These interpretative aids help point you in the direction of a diagnosis. If a patient presents with lymphopenia, for instance, the analyser will detect it and notify you. 

The SediVue Dx analyser uses AI to help you identify elements in a urine sample. Once its onboard centrifuge and inverted microscope have prepared the sample and obtained high-quality images, the analyser’s intelligence steps in to generate comprehensive results.

The analyser’s training library is made up of a curated collection of over 350 million urine sediment images. We use these images to improve the analyser’s performance. This means that, ultimately, the more samples you and other veterinarians run, the better the analyser will become at identifying abnormalities.

AI helps reduce errors when running diagnostics in your practice

As seen above, the benefits of advanced technology don’t end with smarter ways to process patient samples. Modern smart analysers are also set up to provide helpful alerts and specific feedback, including flagging when sample errors occur, thereby reducing the extra effort of having to rerun samples.

The Catalyst One Chemistry Analyser is one example of an analyser that uses this technology. The slides you load with your samples have individual bar codes, while the analyser contains the processing rules for these codes. The analyser looks at the bar codes, decodes the instructions for processing (algorithms), and carries them out. It knows how long to expose each slide to light, how to assess the colour intensity reflected by the slides, and how to interpret them accurately—so you don’t have to. The system also carries out numerous additional analytical checks.

The Catalyst One Analyser’s AI also works together with its image capture system to notify you when there is a loading error, and when the machine is ready to go. It’s also intelligent enough to check that all the material required for it to run is present. And if something is missing, it informs you immediately, letting you know exactly what is required.

IDEXX will continue to use AI to supercharge its in-house analysers. As technology advances, you can expect to see its use cases grow. Veterinary technology will become smarter and offer increasingly high-quality diagnostic insights.

And at the end of the day, all of these intelligent features will be of benefit to the patient and your team. With IDEXX analysers, you’ll achieve greater efficiency for you and your team, shorten your diagnosis times and increase your accuracy—enabling you to provide the highest standard of care and be ready with the appropriate next steps.