The African Neuroimaging Archive (AfNiA): An Approach for Democratizing AI in Medical Imaging

Artificial intelligence (AI) can advance equitable access to high value care and improve health outcomes across all settings. Since the burden of non-communicable diseases is rising sharply in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) while decreasing in the Global North, the potential of AI is higher in such low resource settings with greater disease burden and scarce healthcare availability. Yet, even as global efforts are creating promising AI methods for medical imaging applications , it is unclear whether they can be deployed for clinical use in SSA due to limitations in image quality and availability of curated medical data. This white paper outlines an approach to address the challenges that reinforce disparities AI applications in healthcare, focusing on imaging challenges unique to SSA. Overcoming these challenges will enable full participation of SSA and other low resource settings in AI innovations thus making healthcare affordable and able to address health outcomes across all settings.