How AI Could Help Diagnose Prostate Cancer

CLEVELAND - September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. 

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for men in the United States.

Now, researchers are studying whether artificial intelligence can aid in diagnosis. 

“MRI is used to help the urologists decide whether or not the patient needs a biopsy and also to decide where the sample of tissue needs to come from in order to accurately detect the cancer,” said Andrei Purysko, MD, diagnostic radiologist at Cleveland Clinic. “And so, the way this technology works is we use artificial intelligence to fast track that process where the images are analyzed by the computer algorithm and then the results are sent to us. That makes the interpretation of the images fast and potentially even more accurate.”

Dr. Purysko said before this AI technology, they would use a scoring system to determine whether there was a likelihood of prostate cancer.

This new program does that too.

Plus, it can identify suspicious locations, give a probability risk for cancer being present, and better guide surgeons during biopsies.

“Efficiency is one of the most important things behind our motivation to work with the software. We know that radiologists already do a fantastic job. But here, the main goal is to help us improve our efficiency, and patients will certainly benefit as well by getting results faster,” said Dr. Purysko.

Right now, the AI technology is being used as part of a clinical trial.

However, the hope is that it can one day be implemented as standard practice.