IBM's AI Is Improving Healthcare By Advancing Cancer, Schizophrenia Research

A team of researchers from the University of Alberta, Canada and tech giant IBM has developed artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, which can diagnose schizophrenia by studying the blood flow of the brain. Mina Gheiratmand, the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, said the algorithm was able to provide diagnosis with 74 percent accuracy. Using the algorithm, doctors might not just be able to be diagnose the disease but even determine its severity using a simple MRI scan and the AI-based neural network, which studies the blood flow. "This unique, innovative multidisciplinary approach opens new insights and advances our understanding of the neurobiology of schizophrenia, which may help to improve the treatment and management of the disease," Serdar Dursun, a professor of psychiatry & neuroscience with the University of Alberta, said in a statement to Engadget. The researchers studied 95 subjects, including 46 schizophrenia patients.