Risking to sound like a miserable old git, but can we please stop calling intelligent anything that includes an artificial neural network?
Having moaned about that, it seems a promising approach, not just for old gits.
Artificially intelligent software could help doctors treat a problem that is, quite literally, a pain in the arse: prostate cancer. A team of radiologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, built a convolutional neural network to analyse MRI scans of male nether regions and detect signs of the cancer. These types …
Sorry to hear about that, having been there and got the T-shirt. One word of advice, along with the pelvic floor muscle exercises, measure the length and girth of your erect member before the operation. Those figures may come (pardon the expression) handy afterwards, depending on what nerves can be spared.
Lets just say afterwards, there's a mentality of use it or lose it and one of the instruments that help you use it, will require the measurements mentioned. It will avoid an avoid conversation at a later point in time.
In the UK MRI capicty is going to have to be greatly expanded to use it as a prostate screening tool. This is putting the cart before the horse and screening is best targeted to at risk populations or you risk over treatment. Lots of men die with prostrate cancer rather than because of it.
And on top of that: a HCP can only diagnose something IF the (potential) patient sees them. Of course we can go on and on about all kinds of scanning and "check up" initiatives, but epidemiology just shows that many, many cases are missed, just because the patients where never seen (in time). That's why it is all very good and well that AI (groan) and MRI can do the good stuff, but never should, can, or will replace the simple GP palpation when an OTAR* comes in with a runny nose.
Oh, and a quick heads up for you gentlemen: I know that the general attitude is that is will heal itself? Well, news flash, some stuff just don't. Don't get it why you men are always so anal about it...
*OTAR == Old Timer At Risk
Inde a blood test, and of most use if repeated to see if anything has changed, not just done as a one off.
Though I had to hassle my GP for one, even though I'm of an age where they should be offering these as part and parcel of routine periodic checks for things likely to crop up at some point.
Screening is a bit sub par for a lot of conditions in the UK (hence so much cancer gets late diagnosed in UK - relative of mine probably died from prostate cancer, diagnosed late and surgery performe but he died not long after from cancer elsewhere, could be coincidence but hospital reckoned most likely metastasis from the original PC )
Over the last 10 years I've had numerous checks for prostate cancer. Though the MRIs were clear each time they still have done the nasty template biopsies as well. ( All thankfully negative and they've finally concluded they can stop checking). Because there's a 5-15% chance* of missing something in an MRI check.
So there's a long way to go still before the MRI route is adequate, it appears.
*No. I don't know why it's a range.
Same here, a routine blood test showed an elevated PSA so I had a template biopsy*, that caused AUR that in turn needed a camera threaded through the urethra to put in a catheter. That stayed in for a while and eventually had a procedure** called HoLep that scoops out the prostate. Thankfully for me as well both the biopsy and HoLep results were negative.
* Unable to go into an MRI due to having an implant.
** Paid for as waiting list too long 4.5k if you're interested
So it's a pretty good system, that can help with a skills shortage by assisting trained experts get a "cheap" second opinion.
"So, anally speaking, human experts beat a neural network in an academic study that isn't in production use."
A human trained as a physician, who then spent a decade working doing the same task. And it was fairly close. So it's pretty good at doing a SINGLE diagnostic interpretive task. From a dataset of less than a thousand cases. Plus they had the same false positive rate, which means they make similar mistakes.
If I'd help build something like that, I'd be proud. It's not going to replace a physician, but it's going to help them do their jobs. If that means we can all get MRI scans and not die young, that would be great :)