Titan supercomputer tests new deep learning methods for cancer research

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), home of the Titan supercomputer and a research team dedicated to Vice President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot program, is experimenting with how deep learning can be used to improve cancer research. Specifically, ORNL researchers applied new deep learning techniques to automate how information is extracted from cancer pathology reports documented across a nationwide network of cancer registry programs. These registry programs collect demographic and clinical information related to diagnosis, treatment, and history of cancer incidences in the US, and are used by physicians as a consultation tool for broad cancer surveillance. Using a dataset composed of 1,976 pathology reports, ORNL researchers trained a deep-learning algorithm to multitask, which in this context means it was made to simultaneously carry out two different but closely related information-extraction tasks. In the first task the algorithm aimed to identify the primary location of the cancer, and in the second it identified which side of the body the cancer was located.