Deep-Learning-Based COVID-19 Detection: Challenges and Future Directions

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ecumenical pandemic that has affected the whole world drastically by raising a global calamitous situation. Owing to this pernicious disease, millions of people have lost their lives. The scientists are still far from knowing how to tackle the coronavirus due to its multiple mutations found around the globe. The standard testing technique called polymerase chain reaction for the clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 is expensive and time consuming. However, to assist specialists and radiologists in COVID-19 detection and diagnosis, deep learning plays an important role. Many research efforts have been done that leverage deep learning techniques and technologies for the identification or categorization of COVID-19-positive patients, and these techniques are proved to be a powerful tool that can automatically detect or diagnose COVID-19 cases. In this article, we identify significant challenges regarding deep-learning-based systems and techniques that use different medical imaging modalities, including cough and breadth, chest X-ray, and computed tomography, to combat COVID-19 outbreak. We also pinpoint important research questions for each category of challenges.