As artificial intelligence (AI) advances, laboratories and clinics around the world are pushing cancer research using new technology to assist patients in receiving the appropriate therapy.
Cancer is still one of the leading causes of death in the world. More so, it is undeniable that the number of new instances has steadily increased throughout the decades.
Singapore Scientists Using AI To Detect Cancer Mutations
Singapore scientists are using a new approach described in a study, titled "Accurate Somatic Variant Detection Using Weakly Supervised Deep Learning" published in the journal Nature Communications, to identify cancer mutations from millions of DNA fragments in a tumor sample using artificial intelligence.
As per CNA, the method is called the Variant Network (VarNet), which is said to accurately detect mutated cancer DNA by sequencing data from both Singapore and international databases.
Human specialists analyze photos of overlapping DNA readings for suspected alterations to conduct the process. However, a person can only accomplish this for a few mutations at a time.
Dr. Anders Skanderup, the lead author of the research, explained that the AI technique has the ability to accomplish the same operation over the full 3 billion nucleotides in the human genome.
GIS executive director Professor Patrick Tan said that identifying cancer mutation is a critical step in developing precise medicine. He added that VarNet has demonstrated the effectiveness of using AI to detect cancer mutations with an accuracy often exceeding the performance of state-of-art methods. The method is available to researchers for fast and accurate detection of cancer mutations.
Canadian Lab Created New Technology That Performs Better Than MRI
Breast cancer patients typically undergo imaging tests, like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to look for cancerous tumors, Now, a laboratory in Waterloo, Canada is taking breast cancer research to new heights through AI.
The Waterloo lab has developed a synthetic correlate diffusion MRI that is tailored to capture cancer details and properties in a way that a typical MRI scan does not provide, Global News reported.
Professor Alexander Wong, the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Medical Imaging at the University of Waterloo, told the news outlet that AI could help oncologists and medical doctors to identify and personalize treatment for cancer patients.
Researchers explain that the new AI-driven technology predicts whether the patient will likely benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy or not. Wong said that the hardware of the actual MRI scanner has not changed in this model, but the way the technology transmits "pulses" through the patient's body and gathers data has.
He added that cancer lights up show the different nuances and characteristics around it, which now makes the location, size, and characteristics of cancer easier to identify to help doctors make better decisions. The AI may examine MRI data to help learn whether patients would benefit from breast cancer chemotherapy before surgery in their treatment process.
According to Wong, the technique has been evaluated in a prospective trial of around 253 patient cases from a cohort in the United States who had chemotherapy before surgery. The AI was able to accurately forecast which patients will benefit from chemotherapy about 87% of the time.
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