AI technology has the potential for breast cancer diagnosis
pharmafile | February 1, 2022 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |
Academics at King’s College, London, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, are using historical scans in a new study to evaluate how AI-driven diagnostic software might aid breast cancer assessments.
The study will assess the impact of the software-assisted diagnostic techniques using historical lymph node cases from Guy’s Cancer Centre. This will be on real lymph node images from breast cancer patients, who have given consent for the anonymous images to be used in research. The research is being co-led by Danny Ruta, AI Clinical Lead at Guy’s and St Thomas’, and Dr Anita Grigoriadis, Reader in the School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences at King’s College London.
Dr Anita Grigoriadis commented: “Developing, evaluating and implementing novel AI-based approaches is a promising area for research. These technologies have the potential to change the future of healthcare. Working with Paige is opening up new ways for us to participate in taking AI-based approaches from design to application.”
The study will show how the technology could help pathologists in their decision-making. If successful, clinical studies will investigate the use of this technology in standard care. The technology is currently being used for research only, and is not available for use in clinical care.
New technology has been developed by Paige, a digital diagnostics software company. Paige Lymph Node is an AI software system that can assist pathologists in identifying whether cancer in the breast has potentially spread to the lymphatic system.
Paige Lymph Node has been developed using advanced computational and AI techniques called ‘deep learning’ AI, which imitates the way humans gain knowledge. The results are presented to the pathologists to help them identify and classify potential metastatic tissue. The technology is not intended to replace pathologist assessment, but to allow pathologists to work with much greater efficiency, and draw attention to cancers that might have been missed.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer globally, with around 56,000 new cases every year.
Ana Ovey
