Artificial Intelligence in England to treat cancer patients two times faster with radiotherapy: Report

By Team Newsable | First Published Jun 27, 2023, 2:28 PM IST

The government has been investing in AI projects across the NHS - but this is the first NHS-developed AI program released as a medical-imaging device. Doctors still check each of the contours drawn by the AI program.

All NHS trusts in England will receive a new sort of artificial intelligence equipment at no cost that reduces the amount of time cancer patients must wait before beginning treatment. It is reportedly said that the AI assists physicians in determining the best location to focus therapeutic radiation beams in order to eradicate malignant cells while protecting as many healthy ones as feasible.

Researchers at Addenbrooke's Hospital trained the AI program with Microsoft. "It has been a decade in the making," they say.

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The doctors typically spend between 25 minutes and two hours working through about 100 scan cross-sections for each patient and carefully "contouring" or outlining bones and organs. The researchers said that the AI program works two and a half times faster.

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When treating the prostate gland, for example, medics want to avoid damage to the nearby bladder or rectum, which could leave patients with lifelong continence issues.

"That can get so bad that a patient's life becomes dominated by that," Dr Raj Jena, at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, who has been leading the work for treating patients with head, neck and prostate cancers told a news agency.

Dr Jena worked with Microsoft to train a program called InnerEye on data from previous patients. "I know patients where they've got a map of the cities that they're going to, so they know where all the loos are," Dr Jena said.

The NHS Artificial Intelligence Laboratory subsequently donated £500,000 to Addenbrooke's to cover the cost of the required safety inspections and assessments. Additionally, the programme is currently being supplied to a producer who has consented to let other NHS trusts use the cloud-based technology for a cost.

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The researchers have said that it is about 90 percent accurate, with clinicians approving its work without any corrections about two-thirds of the time.

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