Source: aislan13 / Getty Images The ability to accurately identify cancer--and classify cancer types--using machine learning would provide a tremendous advance in cancer diagnostics for both physicians and patients. But that is just one role of many that machine learning can play in cancer. Another application is to predict genomic alterations from morphological characteristics learned from digital slides.

The ability to accurately identify cancer--and classify cancer types--using machine learning would provide a tremendous advance in cancer diagnostics for both physicians and patients. But that is just one role of many that machine learning can play in cancer. Another application is to predict genomic alterations from morphological characteristics learned from digital slides. The genomicA team at the University of Chicago (UChicago) Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center, working with colleagues in Europe, created a deep learning algorithm that can infer molecular alterations directly from routine histology images across multiple common tumor types. It also provides spatially resolved tumor and normal tissue distinction.