Researchers from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) recently developed a machine to detect prostate cancer that only needs 20 minutes of your time and a few ounces to achieve almost 100% accuracy. Human oncologists are only about 30% accurate when it comes to detecting the disease. This is a big deal.
Background: The detection of prostate cancer is literally a pain in the ass. In the current paradigm, the disease is confirmed by a combination of laboratory work and invasive diagnostics. It involves a painful biopsy procedure where surgeons remove a tissue sample from the prostate gland.
Unfortunately, a large number of patients undergoing this procedure do not actually need it. These otherwise healthy people are at risk of hospital-acquired infections, surgical death and persistent side effects, including discomfort, pain and internal bleeding.
How it works: The KIST team decided to concentrate on urine because it contains trace amounts of what researchers call ‘cancer factors’. People usually cannot diagnose prostate cancer using urine because the concentration of these cancer factors is simply not high enough to withstand the standard test methods.
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To overcome this obstacle, the team used a special semiconductor-based sensor that is sensitive enough to detect enough data for the team’s algorithms to analyze and correlate.
According to a press release from the Korean National Council for Science and Technology:
They trained AI using the correlation between the four cancer factors, obtained from the developed sensor. The trained AI algorithm was then used to identify those with prostate cancer by analyzing complex patterns of the detected signals. The diagnosis of prostate cancer using the AI analysis successfully detected 76 urine samples with almost 100 percent accuracy.
Quick take: Wow! It’s amazing. Assuming that everything in the research expands if it is enlarged according to the general population, it can save many lives. On average, about 1 in every 41 men dies from prostate cancer. It is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men worldwide.
Best of all, the team believes this work can be adapted for other types of cancer.
You can read the team’s research article here.
Published on January 21, 2021 – 18:48 UTC