Robot scans that can spot bowel cancer humans miss trends now
View
comments
Artificial intelligence may be more effective than the human eye alone at spotting the early signs of bowel cancer.
A new UK trial is investigating whether adding AI technology — which uses computer algorithms to scan and read images — to standard colonoscopy examinations improves the accuracy of these scans.
More than 42,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer in the UK each year and 16,000 die from it, making it the second most common cause of cancer death.
Colonoscopies are the ‘gold standard’ way of diagnosing the disease. This is where the large bowel is examined using a camera attached to a thin, flexible tube.
Artificial intelligence may be more effective than the human eye alone at spotting the early signs of bowel cancer
The camera relays live images from inside the bowel on to a screen, allowing the clinician carrying out the procedure to check for pre-cancerous polyps called adenomas — small growths that can be found on the wall of the bowel. It is believed that bowel cancer develops from these polyps and, if detected, they can be removed during the procedure.
However, although colonoscopies are extremely effective, three in every 100 examinations miss a cancer or polyp which might be small, flat or hidden in the folds of the bowel but which goes on to become a cancer, according to the NHS.
Scientists hope that integrating AI technology (which not only reads scans but also learns as it goes along) into existing colonoscopy equipment could help save more lives by boosting the accuracy of the 45-minute procedure, so that more cancers are caught at an early stage when they’re easier to treat.
To try to locate these hard-to-find
