Deep Learning Algorithm Diagnoses Skin Cancer Better than Human Dermatologists - The New Stack

The days of a depending on a human doctor may soon be numbered, as the future of the health industry looks increasingly like an AI-assisted scenario. Researchers and startups are developing artificially intelligent systems that are capable of diagnosing disease using a patient's breath and even from the emotional inflection of their voice. Someday, your smartphone may help you and your doctor determine whether a strange-looking lesion on your skin is cancerous or not, thanks to a team of Stanford University scientists that have developed a deep learning algorithm tailored just for the task. Led by Sebastian Thrun, an adjunct professor at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the team found that their diagnostic tool, which builds upon the same classification technique used by Google to differentiate between images of cats and dogs, performed as well or better than 21 board-certified dermatologists. Their findings were detailed in a recent paper published in Nature.