While artificial intelligence has tremendous potential for revolutionizing healthcare delivery, there are many possible pitfalls and ill-intended uses of this powerful technology. "With the great promise of AI comes an even greater responsibility," Tourassi testified on Wednesday before a House committee hearing on AI's societal and ethical implications. "There are many ethical questions when applying AI in medicine." With respect to ethics, she observed that the massive volumes of health data being leveraged by AI must be carefully protected to preserve privacy. "The sheer volume, variability and sensitive nature of the personal data being collected require newer, extensive, secure and sustainable computational infrastructure and algorithms," according to Tourassi's testimony.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 19, 2018 – In an effort to reduce errors in the analyses of diagnostic images by health professionals, a team of researchers from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has improved understanding of the cognitive processes involved in image interpretation. The work, published in the Journal of Medical Imaging, has potential to improve health outcomes for the hundreds of thousands of American women affected by breast cancer each year. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death in women and early detection is critical for effective treatment. Catching the disease early requires an accurate interpretation of a patient's mammogram; conversely, a radiologist's misinterpretation of a mammogram can have enormous consequences for a patient's future. The ORNL-led team, which included Gina Tourassi, Hong-Jun Yoon and Folami Alamudun, as well as Paige Paulus of the University of Tennessee's Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, found that analyses of mammograms by radiologists were significantly influenced by context bias, or the radiologist's previous diagnostic experiences.

A representation of a deep learning neural network designed to intelligently extract text-based information from cancer pathology reports. Despite steady progress in detection and treatment in recent decades, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, cutting short the lives of approximately 500,000 people each year. To better understand and combat this disease, medical researchers rely on cancer registry programs--a national network of organizations that systematically collect demographic and clinical information related to the diagnosis, treatment, and history of cancer incidence in the United States. The surveillance effort, coordinated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enables researchers and clinicians to monitor cancer cases at the national, state, and local levels. Much of this data is drawn from electronic, text-based clinical reports that must be manually curated--a time-intensive process--before it can be used in research.

Despite steady progress in detection and treatment in recent decades, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, cutting short the lives of approximately 500,000 people each year. To better understand and combat this disease, medical researchers rely on cancer registry programs--a national network of organizations that systematically collect demographic and clinical information related to the diagnosis, treatment, and history of cancer incidence in the United States. The surveillance effort, coordinated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enables researchers and clinicians to monitor cancer cases at the national, state, and local levels. Much of this data is drawn from electronic, text-based clinical reports that must be manually curated--a time-intensive process--before it can be used in research. For example, cancer pathology reports, text documents that describe cancerous tissue in detail, must be individually read and annotated by experts before becoming part of a cancer registry.

Despite steady progress in detection and treatment in recent decades, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, cutting short the lives of approximately 500,000 people each year. To better understand and combat this disease, medical researchers rely on cancer registry programs--a national network of organizations that systematically collect demographic and clinical information related to the diagnosis, treatment, and history of cancer incidence in the United States. The surveillance effort, coordinated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enables researchers and clinicians to monitor cancer cases at the national, state, and local levels. Much of this data is drawn from electronic, text-based clinical reports that must be manually curated--a time-intensive process--before it can be used in research. For example, cancer pathology reports, text documents that describe cancerous tissue in detail, must be individually read and annotated by experts before becoming part of a cancer registry.