Bowel cancer: AI improves early detection

Bowel cancer: AI improves early detection unknown

The fantastic thing about AI is that it learns. It is trained by looking at images, using the data to find the differences between the images, and it is adding to its knowledge all the time, so it’s only going to get betterColin Rees

COLO-DETECT was a randomised controlled trial, with half of the 2,032 participants in the procedure having a colonoscopy using AI, and the other half having a ‘traditional’ colonoscopy. The colonoscopy is a procedure where a camera is used to look inside the bowel, with the aim of spotting cancerous and precancerous polyps (adenomas). The trial involves putting a green box around possible polyps on the screen, which shows what the camera can see, with the clinician ultimately deciding whether to remove the polyp. 

There are around 43,000 new cases of bowel cancer in the UK each year, and Professor Rees hopes this technology will now be adopted more widely to detect early signs of the disease. He added: “It is a tragedy because bowel cancer is a disease that people shouldn't be dying from. We have a long window of time when these polyps develop, probably about 10 to 15 years from developing a point to them becoming cancer. We are now using this technology routinely in our practice, and I really hope that it will be used more extensively, and the fantastic thing about AI is that it learns. It is trained by looking at images, using the data to find the differences between the images, and it is adding to its knowledge all the time, so it’s only going to get better.” 

Source: Newcastle University