Artificial intelligence can detect Alzheimer's decade before symptoms emerge

Artificial intelligence (AI) can identify Alzheimer's disease 10 years before doctors can discover the symptoms, according to new research. A team of researchers in Italy developed an algorithm that can spot structural changes in the brain that are caused by the disease a decade before the signs become apparent. The team from the University of Bari trained the AI by feeding in 67 MRI scans - 38 from Alzheimer's patients and 29 healthy patients - then asked it to analyse the neuronal connectivity to form an algorithm. Following the training, the AI was then asked to process brains from 148 subjects - 52 were healthy, 48 had Alzheimer's disease and 48 had mild cognitive impairment (MCI) but were known to have developed Alzheimer's disease two and a half to nine years later. According to the researchers, the AI diagnosed Alzheimer's disease 86 per cent of the time.