A web-based artificial intelligence system for label-free virus classification and detection of cytopathic effects

Identifying viral replication within cells demands labor-intensive isolation methods, requiring specialized personnel and additional confirmatory tests. To facilitate this process, we developed an AI-powered automated system called AI Recognition of Viral CPE (AIRVIC), specifically designed to detect and classify label-free cytopathic effects (CPEs) induced by SARS-CoV-2, BAdV-1, BPIV3, BoAHV-1, and two strains of BoGHV-4 in Vero and MDBK cell lines. AIRVIC utilizes convolutional neural networks, with ResNet50 as the primary architecture, trained on 40,369 microscopy images at various magnifications. AIRVIC demonstrated strong CPE detection, achieving 100% accuracy for the BoGHV-4 DN-599 strain in MDBK cells, the highest among tested strains. In contrast, the BoGHV-4 MOVAR 33/63 strain in Vero cells showed a lower accuracy of 87.99%, the lowest among all models tested. For virus classification, a multi-class accuracy of 87.61% was achieved for bovine viruses in MDBK cells; however, it dropped to 63.44% when the virus was identified without specifying the cell line. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research article published in English to utilize AI for distinguishing animal virus infections in cell culture. AIRVIC's hierarchical structure highlights its adaptability to virological diagnostics, providing unbiased infectivity scoring and facilitating viral isolation and antiviral efficacy testing. Additionally, AIRVIC is accessible as a web-based platform, allowing global researchers to leverage its capabilities in viral diagnostics and beyond.