AI can accurately diagnose cancer, but cannot take treatment decisions: Study

Artificial intelligenceAI based cancer diagnosis is as accurate as those made by doctors but is inferior when it comes to treatment decisions according to a studyIn the study published by The Lancet Digital Health researchers compared the accuracy in diagnosis and therapy recommendation of skin cancer using two different algorithms in smartphone applications with that of doctorsThe results show that the AI application generally performs well in diagnosis However doctors were clearly superior when it came to treatment decisionsThe research team from Medical University of Vienna in Austria tested the AI application under realistic clinical conditions in two skin cancer centresThe prospective study consisted of two scenarios with AI being used in scenario A for changes suspicious of skin cancer and in scenario B for patients with many moles The AIassisted application was compared in both cases with both medical experts and less experienced physiciansIn scenario A 172 suspicious pigmented lesions of which 84 were malignant were examined in 124 patients in scenario B the research team analysed 5696 pigmented lesions of which 18 were malignant in 66 patients Two different AIbased smartphone applications were used a novel 7class AI algorithm and an ISIC algorithm already used in retrospective preliminary studiesIn scenario A the 7class AI algorithm showed equivalent diagnostic accuracy compared to the experts while it was significantly superior to the less experienced physicians The ISIC algorithm on the other hand performed significantly worse compared to experts but better than the inexperienced usersIn terms of treatment decisions the 7class algorithm was significantly inferior to the experts but superior to the inexperienced usersThe results suggest that an AIassisted smartphone application for skin cancer diagnosis makes similarly good diagnostic decisions as experts in a real clinical scenario When it came to treatment decisions however the experts were superior to the AIThe AI application tends to remove more benign lesions in the treatment recommendation than experts would If you take this into account the AI application can certainly be used It should also be borne in mind that if it is used uncritically too many falsepositive findings would have to be clarified said dermatologist Harald Kittler from the varsityThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever