A study has claimed artificial intelligence can predict adult patients’ survival who have been diagnosed with brain cancer.
The research, done by King’s College London, says artificial intelligence (AI), can predict whether adult patients with brain cancer will survive more than eight months after radiotherapy.
It says AI predicting patient outcomes would give medical staff vital information allowing them to plan treatment and refer them to life-saving therapies sooner. The study, published in Neuro-Oncology, reveals King’s College London researchers created a deep learning model to reliably and accurately predict outcomes for patients with adult primary brain cancer (glioblastoma).
One in four patients survive more than one year after diagnosis. Science researchers used AI to predict whether patients would survive eight months after radiotherapy treatment.
In current practice, patients are scanned routinely to see if the treatment is working, but in some cases, it’s ineffective and means the patient still suffers harmful side effects.
The study suggests after an accurate prediction from an MRI scan, the technology can inform clinicians to identify which patients wouldn’t benefit from chemotherapy, and try different or experimental treatments instead.
Dr Thomas Booth, Neurology Consultant at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This study was motivated by a clinically-attuned and critical research question regarding aggressive brain tumours, and delivered by leveraging cutting edge artificial intelligence.
“Whilst less common than other cancers, the devastation is disproportionate with a two-year survival rate of 18%.”
He explained: “We also side-stepped a thorny issue: after radiotherapy, follow-up brain scan findings are often non-specific and oncologists cannot be certain whether a treatment is working or failing.
“Instead of trying to grapple with interpreting each and every non-specific follow-up brain scan, we simply looked at one routine scan after radiotherapy and gave an accurate prediction using artificial intelligence to answer a simple question: which patients will not survive the next 8 months? The AI was able to give us an immediate and accurate prediction which means clinicians can empower patients to make choices about their treatment.”
PhD researcher Alysha Chelliah said: “We applied deep learning to predict whether glioblastoma patients will survive the first eight months after completing radiotherapy. The AI model showed improved performances when first trained to detect abnormalities on 10,000s of brain MRIs.
“This approach is intended to improve the ability to identify patients who require early second-line treatment or clinical trial enrolment, compared to those showing initial treatment response.”
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