World’s Most Accurate AI for Prostate Cancer Detection Unveiled by UPMC

A study published in The Lancet Digital Health by UPMC (The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) and University of Pittsburgh researchers demonstrates the highest accuracy to date in recognizing and characterizing prostate cancer using an artificial intelligence program. The AI was trained to recognize prostate cancer, using more than 1 million images from parts of stained tissue slides taken from patient biopsies. Each image was labelled by expert pathologists to teach the AI how to discriminate between healthy and abnormal tissue. The algorithm was then tested on a separate set of 1,600 slides taken from 100 consecutive patients seen at UPMC for suspected prostate cancer. During testing, the AI demonstrated 98% sensitivity which means that out of 100 patients known to have cancer the AI would correctly diagnose 98 of them and 97% specificity which means out of 100 patients known to not have the disease the AI would correctly say that 97 of them did not have cancer. The AI also flagged six slides that were not noted by the expert pathologists, there could have been a number of reasons for this and this does not necessarily mean that the AI is better than humans yet. But for less experienced pathologists, the AI could certainly act as a failsafe to catch cases that might otherwise be missed. This is also the first algorithm to extend beyond cancer detection, reporting high performance for tumour grading, sizing and invasion of the surrounding nerves. These are all clinically important features, required as part of the pathology report.