MAECI Italy-China

Bilateral research programme on trustworthy multimodal AI for COVID-19 risk analysis, explainability, and robust validation across imaging and clinical data.

MAECI Italy-China

Collaborative Research

MAECI Italy-China

Bilateral research programme on trustworthy multimodal AI for COVID-19 risk analysis, explainability, and robust validation across imaging and clinical data.

COVID-19 Prognosis Trustworthy AI Multimodal Learning

Overview

The Italy-China programme focused on trustworthy next-generation precision medicine for COVID-19, combining chest X-ray, chest CT, and clinical information to identify patients at risk of severe outcomes. The technical core of the project was multimodal deep learning for richer joint representations under limited and heterogeneous biomedical data.

Beyond pure prediction, the programme addressed explainability, counterfactual reasoning, and human-understandable concepts to make AI outputs more useful to physicians, patients, and regulators. The collaboration joined ArCo’s work on multimodal learning and explainable AI with complementary expertise in deep networks and CT-driven risk analysis.

Research Directions

  • Multimodal signatures for severe COVID-19 outcomes using imaging and clinical variables.
  • Explainable AI methods for risk factor analysis and transparent prognostic modelling.
  • Bilateral collaboration joining chest X-ray and chest CT expertise with robust validation protocols.

Related Publications

  1. XGeM: A multi-prompt foundation model for multimodal medical data generation
    Daniele Molino, Francesco Di Feola, Eliodoro Faiella, Deborah Fazzini, Domiziana Santucci, Linlin Shen, Valerio Guarrasi, and Paolo Soda
    2026
    foundation models generative AI multimodal learning
  2. ACGM: Attribute-Centric Graph Modeling Network for Concurrent Missing Tabular Data Imputation and COVID-19 Prognosis
    Zhuoru Wu, Wenting Chen, Xuechen Li, Filippo Ruffini, Shaonan Liu, Lorenzo Tronchin, Domenico Albano, Eliodoro Faiella, Deborah Fazzini, Domiziana Santucci, and 4 more authors
    2025
    oncology COVID-19 explainability
  3. Benchmarking foundation models and parameter-efficient fine-tuning for prognosis prediction in medical imaging
    Filippo Ruffini, Elena Mulero Ayllón, Linlin Shen, Paolo Soda, and Valerio Guarrasi
    2025
    foundation models clinical prediction medical imaging
  4. Any-to-Any Vision-Language Model for Multimodal X-ray Imaging and Radiological Report Generation
    Daniele Molino, Francesco Di Feola, Linlin Shen, Paolo Soda, and Valerio Guarrasi
    2025
    foundation models medical imaging generative AI
  5. Can Foundation Models Really Segment Tumors? A Benchmarking Odyssey in Lung CT Imaging
    Elena Mulero Ayllón, Massimiliano Mantegna, Linlin Shen, Paolo Soda, Valerio Guarrasi, and Matteo Tortora
    2025
    foundation models medical imaging
  6. Multi-objective optimization determines when, which and how to fuse deep networks: An application to predict COVID-19 outcomes
    Valerio Guarrasiand Paolo Soda
    2023
    COVID-19 multimodal learning clinical prediction
  7. AIforCOVID: Predicting the clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19 applying AI to chest-X-rays. An Italian multicentre study
    Paolo Soda, Natascha Claudia D’Amico, Jacopo Tessadori, Giovanni Valbusa, Valerio Guarrasi, Chandra Bortolotto, Muhammad Usman Akbar, Rosa Sicilia, Ermanno Cordelli, Deborah Fazzini, and 18 more authors
    2021
    COVID-19 medical imaging clinical prediction
  8. Pareto optimization of deep networks for COVID-19 diagnosis from chest X-rays
    Valerio Guarrasi, Natascha Claudia D’Amico, Rosa Sicilia, Ermanno Cordelli, and Paolo Soda
    2021
    COVID-19 medical imaging clinical prediction
  9. A Multi-Expert System to Detect COVID-19 Cases in X-ray Images
    Valerio Guarrasi, Natascha Claudia D’Amico, Rosa Sicilia, Ermanno Cordelli, and Paolo Soda
    2021
    COVID-19 medical imaging multimodal learning