AI in treating cancer

AI in treating cancer !!

One of many relatable AI applications for social good pertains to the healthcare sector, as it may personally affect us all. Cancer causes 1 in 6 deaths globally, an estimated 9.6 million people died in 2018, and over 300.000 cases are diagnosed each year. As the disease keeps spreading, AI approaches for healthcare are quickly establishing revolutionary solutions in this space.

Predictive analytics techniques are being applied to healthcare scenarios, in order to evaluate clinical data and anticipate future trends. One of the main advantages of predictive analytics in this field is in improving the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment.

PathAI, a technology provider for pathology laboratories, found a strong correlation between AI-powered and manual qualification of one particular protein across various tumor cells. The PD-L1 protein keeps immune cells from attacking non-harmful cells in the body, and since some cancer cells contain high amounts of this protein, they can deceive the immune system and avoid detection as harmful agents. Thus, they are not attacked. By precisely identifying that protein, health professionals have a greater understanding, which in turn gives them the ability to determine if a patient is more likely to develop cancer or not.

An AI model prediction was evaluated and compared with manual assessments by a network of pathologists to discover whether the platform performed consistently. Researchers trained a model with more than 250,000 pathologist-provided annotations, which eventually performed successfully at the level of a certified pathologist, as stated in the press release. This finding may save vital time and resources by forecasting the probability that cancer cells will spread in a patient.