AI platform helps diagnose prostate cancer, Lancet report shows

The findings, published in The Lancet Oncology in December, suggest AI systems can be trained to detect and grade cancer in prostate needle biopsy samples with an accuracy rate equal to that of international prostate pathology experts. Furthermore, the study noted that the use of AI technology could help reduce the workload of oncologists by reducing the assessment of benign biopsies and by automating the task of measuring cancer length in positive biopsy cores, as well as providing a second opinion. "An AI system with expert-level grading performance might aid in standardizing grading, and provide pathology expertise in parts of the world where it does not exist," the report noted. The system was developed by the team behind Stockholm3 and OncoWatch, two projects supported by EIT Health, a network of top health innovators backed by the EU. A team at Karolinksa Institutet launched Stockholm3, a blood-based prostate cancer diagnostic test, in 2017, which is currently used in clinical practice in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.