Artificial Intelligence Creates Cancer Treatment Plan

Artificial intelligence generated Cancer treatment plans which can reduce the amount of time patients undergo radiation.  Researchers at The Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, compared radiation treatments created by machine learning with those created by human physicians. This study was published in Nature Medicine.

Researchers found that patients spend 60% less time undergoing painful radiation with the Artificial Intelligence treatment compared to the doctors’ treatment plans. An independent board found nearly 90% of all machine learning generated treatments in the study were considered clinically acceptable for use and more than 70% were considered preferable by physicians.

The new study did find that physicians are more hesitant to use Artificial intelligence machine learning generated treatments even though they are effective.Dr Chris McIntosh, chair of Medical Imaging andat the Joint Department of Medical Imaging and the University of Toronto said that the researchers have shown that can be better than human judgement for curative-intent radiation therapy treatment. This study was conducted by presenting physicians with different radiation treatment options for specific cases of Cancer.

One option was generated by an, using ML technology and the other was curated by another physician. The-generated treatment is faster. The patients spend 47 hours in radiation compared to 118 hours in the human process which is a reduction of 60%. Nearly 89% of AI treatments were considered acceptable for use and 72% were preferable to the doctors’ plan.

Dr Tom Purdie, an associate professor at the University of Toronto said that the physicians feel that patient care is at stake, then that may influence their judgement, even though the ML treatments are thoroughly evaluated and validated.