Researchers train AI to diagnose diseases

In the future, AI may work hand in hand with doctors to diagnose and treat diseases more effectively. Image INQUIRER.net

AI development is currently in full swing, with scientists teaching computers how to diagnose diseases.

According to a report on Engadget, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have developed a method for training artificial intelligence based on deep learning.

They started by feeding the AI hundreds of slides that indicated which parts had cancerous cells and which were normal ones. Afterwards they filtered out those that the machine had trouble with and proceeded to feed more difficult samples. In the end, the AI was able to attain 92% accuracy. A trained pathologist, on the other hand, is accurate 96%.

The team was able to prove the effectivity of their methodology during a competition at the International Symposium of Biomedical Imaging. The AI was asked to look for great cancer in lymph nodes.

What excited the researchers the most was when the pathologists’ and the AI results were combined, it yielded a 99.5 percent accuracy. It would seem that having two heads is indeed better than one, at least when spotting cancer in patients. Alfred Bayle