Researchers develop artificial intelligence tool to help detect brain aneurysms

Doctors could soon get some help from an artificial intelligence tool when diagnosing brain aneurysms -- bulges in blood vessels in the brain that can leak or burst open, potentially leading to stroke, brain damage or death. The AI tool, developed by researchers at Stanford and detailed in a paper published June 7 in JAMA Network Open, highlights areas of a brain scan that are likely to contain an aneurysm. "There's been a lot of concern about how machine learning will actually work within the medical field," said Allison Park, a graduate student in statistics and co-lead author of the paper. "This research is an example of how humans stay involved in the diagnostic process, aided by an artificial intelligence tool." This tool, which is built around an algorithm called HeadXNet, improved clinicians' ability to correctly identify aneurysms at a level equivalent to finding six more aneurysms in 100 scans that contain aneurysms.