<No.734> |
Can Artificial Intelligence Make Doctors Better?
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This is a class room
for artificial intelligence, or AI.
Its teacher, Rishi Rawat is feeding the computer more samples
of cancer cells.
"So, they're like a computer brain,
and you can put the data into them
and they will learn the patterns
that's important for making decisions."
Decisions by doctors
to determine the best treatment
for their patients.
"Machines are not gonna take over the place of doctors.
Computers will not treat patients,
but they will help make certain decisions
and look for things
that the human brain can't recognize these patterns
by itself."
For examples,
once a cancerous tumor is removed
from a patient
with breast cancer,
the doctors still have to treat the patient
to reduce the risk of recurrence.
The type of treatment depends
on the type of cancer
and whether the tumor is driven by estrogen.
"So, what the pathologist has to do
is to count what percentage of the cells here are brown,
versus what percentage are not."
This process could take days or even longer.
The computer can do something
better than just count cells.
AI can recognize complicated patterns
on how the cells are arranged,
with the hope,
in the near future
of making a quick and more reliable diagnosis
that is free of human error.
"Are they disordered?
Are they in a regular spacing?
What's going on exactly
with the arrangement of the cells
in the tissue."
Scientists say
the time is ripe
for the marriage
between computer science and cancer research.
"All of a sudden,
we have the computing power
to really do it
in real time.
We have the ability of scanning a slide
to high enough resolution
so that the computer can see every little feature of the cancer.
So it's a convergence of technology.
We couldn't have done this.
We didn't have the computing power
to do this several years ago.
But now, it's all changed."
The research now is on breast cancer,
but doctors predict
artificial intelligence will eventually be used
to help treat patients
with all forms of cancer.
Elizabeth Lee, VOA News, Los Angeles
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