Artificial Intelligence for Cancer Screening: Investors Identify A Potential Future Market

Medical imaging based screening techniques have long been used for the early detection of cancer and the scientific community considers that they play a major role in the reduction in mortality for certain cancer types. Advantages of medical imaging include minimal or no invasiveness, access to internal body organs without tissue destruction and functionality over wide ranges of time and size scales of biological and pathological processes. Medical imaging actually plays an important role in many other cancer management phases, such as biopsy guidance, staging, prognosis and therapy planning. Some of the widely used techniques are: ultrasound, projection radiography (X-ray), fluoroscopy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear medicine functional imaging techniques (positron emission tomography, single-photon emission computed tomography, scintigraphy), X-ray computed tomography (CT). Emerging imaging techniques, still to be validated for use in clinical practice, try to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy organ tissue by examining properties such as elasticity (elastography), pressure (tactile imaging) or optical absorption (photoacoustic imaging).