You’ve no doubt heard of artificial intelligence (AI). It’s a common term in modern society, from the digital sector to self-driving cars and beyond.
AI plays a part in medical advancements, with cancer screening and monitoring part of a growing list of protocols that utilize it. How can it help cancer doctors and their patients?
1. AI Can Detect Cancer Quicker
AI uses expert sets of algorithms that utilise machine learning and other clever approaches to analyse scientific data for radiologists and other medical experts. Without AI, they might have less valuable information at their fingertips.
AI analysis finds and compares datasets quicker than your doctor, resulting in speedier cancer detection. However, medical specialists have to link this data to the presence of cancer.
If you or somebody you know has cancer, you’re aware of the need to detect it early and how staying fit and healthy can be the difference between life and death. You likely understand why doctors spend extra time analysing the data they receive.
AI cancer detection trials continue, and experts refine data all the time to help machine learning become more accurate. Progress is being made in this area.
2. AI Helps Screen for Cancer in Images
You’ve probably had an X-ray or the less common MRI or CT scan. All three are critical to cancer identification, and recent AI advancements are improving screening efforts.
Scientists produce many AI cancer detection and screening tools for various cancers, but most are still being tested. Results are positive, but the jury remains out about AI cancer identification through imagery.
Clinical trials show AI’s ability to accurately identify adenomas in scans, but these precancerous growths likely won’t end up as cancer. You may prefer AI not to identify them since they lead to follow-up tests and a lot of extra stress you want to avoid if possible. For this reason, programmers are working on ways for AI to better identify the difference between potential cancer risks and actual ones.
3. AI Will Predict Cancer Risk and Assist in Surveillance
Clinical evidence shows that AI can already predict your future chances of getting some forms of cancer than your specialist can. It can identify if you run the risk of some brain, kidney, breast, lung, colon or prostate cancers. However, you and your doctors should always make the right health choices to minimize it, such as eating less red meat and getting regular exercise. These predictions only apply to some forms of cancer, although there’s ongoing testing for others that include cervical cancer, which is accountable for 0.7% of cancer deaths yearly.
If you get the news you run a risk of cancer, your oncologist, with AI’s assistance, can more accurately decide what your treatment should be — both to assist in keeping the disease at bay and should it occur. Ongoing AI advancements make surveilling cancer risk more accessible, although clinical trial results are still not final.
Is AI the Answer to Beating Cancer?
Artificial intelligence can screen for, predict, identify and monitor most cancers, but more work is needed. However, ongoing trials are showing rapid progress. AI is helping beat cancer, but human knowledge and tenacity will keep driving its effectiveness.
