AI can predict if you'll die soon by examining your organs

Luckily, foretelling such dire consequences may help doctors to stave them off. "Predicting the future of a patient is useful because it may enable doctors to tailor treatments to the individual," lead author Dr. Luke Oakden-Rayner told the University of Adelaide. "Instead of focusing on diagnosing diseases, the automated systems can predict medical outcomes in a way that doctors are not trained to do, by incorporating large volumes of data and detecting subtle patterns." For this study, the system was looking for things like emphysema, an enlarged heart and vascular conditions like blood clotting.The deep learning system was trained to analyze over 16,000 image features that could indicate signs of disease in those organs. Machines have become adept at it surprisingly quickly, even though it's "something that requires extensive training for human experts," said Oakden-Rayner.