Development of artificial intelligence to help in diagnosing cancer - The Mainichi

Hailed as giving birth to the "fourth industrial revolution," artificial intelligence (AI) is being developed in yet another field -- cancer diagnosis. Medical and research institutions are developing AI technology to diagnose cancer using "deep learning." One example is the Japan Society of Pathology, which began developing AI technology in February at 29 institutions, including The University of Tokyo Hospital and Kyushu University Hospital, to reduce the load on the country's overworked pathologists. The system being developed by the society compiles images of tissue samples from patients at the participating institutions into a database, where AI then decides if the case is cancer or not, learning from its past successes and failures, a method called deep learning. Pathology is a field of medicine where doctors examine samples of body tissues using a microscope and decide whether the patient has a disease, such as cancer.