Artificial Intelligence Was As Good Or Better Than Doctors At Detecting Lung Cancer In Promising Study
But the test does have pitfalls: It can miss tumors, or mistake benign spots for malignancies and push patients into invasive, risky procedures like lung biopsies or surgery.
The New York Times:
A.I. Took A Test To Detect Lung Cancer. It Got An A.
Computers were as good or better than doctors at detecting tiny lung cancers on CT scans, in a study by researchers from Google and several medical centers. The technology is a work in progress, not ready for widespread use, but the new report, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, offers a glimpse of the future of artificial intelligence in medicine. One of the most promising areas is recognizing patterns and interpreting images — the same skills that humans use to read microscope slides, X-rays, M.R.I.s and other medical scans. (Grady, 5/20)
Stat:
Google's AI Boosts Accuracy Of Lung Cancer Diagnosis, Study Shows
A study published in Nature Medicine reported that the algorithm, trained on 42,000 patient CT scans taken during a National Institutes of Health clinical trial, outperformed six radiologists in determining whether patients had cancer. It detected 5% more cancers and cut false positives — when cancer is suspected though a nodule is harmless — by 11% from reviewing a single scan. It performed on par with the radiologists when prior images of patients were also included in the evaluation. (Ross, 5/20)
