By: Azhar Azam
2-0 appears to be Soccer World Cup 2018 score line. Although it isn’t but the result is no less than the shocks to the football spectators, provided by the exit of some of world’s top teams – Germany, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal.
BioMind – an artificial intelligence (AI) system – defeated 15 topnotch human physicians by 2-0 in a couple of rounds of competition to diagnose brain tumors and predict the expansion of hematoma or bruises.
It is developed by Artificial Intelligence Research Center for Neurological Disorders at Beijing Tiantan Hospital and a research team from Capital Medical University (CMU).
The newly AI system made correct diagnosis in 87% of 225 cases in 15 minutes against 66% accuracy in 30 minutes, achieved by the top radiologists from across China.
AI system also gave correct predictions in 83% of brain hematoma expansion cases – outperforming 63% accuracy of elite team of doctors from renowned hospital.
Developers trained the AI system by feeding it tens of thousands of archived images related with nervous diseases – enabling it to correctly diagnose over 90% of the common neurological diseases such as meningioma and glioma.
The diagnosis ratio was comparable to senior doctors.
All the case were real and contributed by the hospital, but were never used as training material for the AI, according to the organizer.
The competition was organized primarily to help doctors to learn and interact with the technology of the future rather than letting them down against AI.
Wang Yongjun, executive vice president of Beijing Tiantan Hospital said that the competition is an effort to draw the doctors’ attention towards power of AI – especially for some doctors who are skeptical about artificial intelligence.
Radiologists appreciated the effort and acknowledged that AI is not a threat but a friend which will reduce their workload and push them to learn and improve on skills.
However AI technology is still in embryonic stages on medical pitch and its accuracy lags behind the senior professionals in most cases. At the same time, the machine cannot take into account a number of factors such as patient’s state of health or patient’s family medical history.
Yet in future, it will be like a ‘GPS-guided car’ which will assist the doctors to diagnose and it will ultimately be the human doctor who will make the final decision, experts agreed.
China is pursuing AI applications development plan. In 2017, State Council of China unveiled ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Plan’ to becoming a global innovation center in artificial intelligence market of $148 billion by 2030.
Pressed by government, new technologies including AI have now increasingly been used in medical care in China. It is helping doctors to read images, such as lungs scan, for diagnoses at some hospitals in China.
In June, a Swedish company – Elekta – introduced IBM’s Watson for Oncology to provide customized treatment to cancer patients in China. The AI platform has been used in 68 hospitals in China to cure cancer patients.