Google researchers say their AI system identifies the signs of prostate cancer.
According to a recent VentureBeat report, the system grades each section of a biopsy sample and then summarizes the classifications into an overall score.
In trials where six professionals with years of experience under their belts evaluated the system’s accuracy, the results showed the Google AI system achieved 72% accuracy.
Taking the ambiguous appearances of some prostate cancers into account, the system’s agreement rate with experts was comparable to the agreement rate between the experts themselves, according to the Google researchers.
In addition to Gleason grading, the Google researchers evaluated the general pathologists’ performance compared with the system for differentiating specimens with and without cancer. Given a total of 752 samples, the pathologists and system were in agreement in 94.3% to 94.7% of cases; while the system caught more cancers, it also flagged more false positives. — VentureBeat
“These promising results indicate that the deep learning system has the potential to support expert-level diagnoses and expand access to high-quality cancer care. To evaluate if it could improve the accuracy and consistency of prostate cancer diagnoses, this technology needs to be validated as an assistive tool in further clinical studies and on larger and more diverse patient groups. However, we believe that AI-based tools could help pathologists in their work, particularly in situations where specialist expertise is limited,” software engineer for Google Kunal Nagpal blogged.
“We look forward to future research and investigation into how our technology can be best validated, designed and used to improve patient care and cancer outcomes.”
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