Novel artificial intelligence-driven software significantly shortens the time required for annotation in computer vision projects

The contribution of artificial intelligence (AI) to endoscopy is rapidly expanding. Accurate labelling of source data (video frames) remains the rate-limiting step for such projects and is a painstaking, cost-inefficient, time-consuming process. A novel software platform, Cord Vision (CdV) allows automated annotation based on ‘embedded intelligence’. The user manually labels a representative proportion of frames in a section of video (typically 5%), to create ‘micro-models’ which allow accurate propagation of the label throughout the remaining video frames. This could drastically reduce the time required for annotation. We conducted a comparative study with an open-source labelling platform (CVAT) to determine speed and accuracy of labelling. Across 5 users, CdV resulted in a significant increase in labelling performance (p 97% accuracy for bounding box placement. This advance represents a valuable first step in Al-image analysis projects.