Using Artificial Intelligence to Detect Molecular Changes... : Oncology Times

Using artificial intelligence (AI), European researchers have developed an algorithm that they say successfully detects molecular changes in tumor cells and tissues from microscopic slides in many different cancers. "What is quite remarkable is that our algorithm can automatically link the histological appearance of almost any tumor with a very broad set of molecular characteristics and with patient survival," said Moritz Gerstung, PhD, group leader at EMBL European Bioformatics Institute. Institute researchers collaborated on the study with scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, UK. The pan-cancer analysis is believed to be the largest to date to train computer vision to "see" and combine digital pathology with the genetic changes that occur in cells as malignancies take hold. Ordinarily, histopathologists examine the appearance of cancer tissue under a microscope first, then geneticists perform molecular sequencing separately to analyze changes in the genetic code.