Computer vision tool mildly helps doctors identify potentially cancerous cells<\/b>
\nThe US Food and Drug Administration this month authorized the first AI-powered tool designed to help healthcare physicians diagnose prostate cancer. Paige, a startup spun out of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), a research institution in New York City, was granted approval to officially tout its computer-vision software known as FullFocus. This application scans images of cells and predicts whether or not they are cancerous for doctors to consider. \u201cPathologists examine biopsies of tissue suspected for diseases, such as prostate cancer, every day. Identifying areas of concern on the biopsy image can help pathologists make a diagnosis that informs the appropriate treatment,\u201d said Tim Stenzel, director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health in the FDA\u2019s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. \u201cThe authorization of this AI-based software can help increase the number of identified prostate biopsy samples with cancerous tissue, which can ultimately save lives.\u201d A letter [ PDF] from the FDA addressed to Paige before FullFocus was officially authorized acknowledged that the tool stores and manages images of slides of bodily tissues. It helps pathologists study these biopsy samples by using computer vision techniques to highlight tissue that looks abnormal and might be cancerous. The software also stores the data in a format that allows experts to quickly find scans for particular patients, and gives them the ability to zoom into parts of an image and add annotations for their fellow healthcare professionals. Diagnosis of cancer, however, is left up to the medics. FullFocus only helps them better visualize potentially cancerous cells. Paige was also only given the green light by the regulator for using the FullFocus to study prostate cancer, where it led to improved detection on individual slide images by 7.3 per cent on average. \u201cFDA approval allows pathology laboratories to introduce this diagnostic tool into their clinical workflow to help make pathologists more accurate, more reproducible, and more efficient, which will allow them to focus their attention on the most critical aspects of establishing the diagnosis,\u201d said David Klimstra, Paige\u2019s co-founder and chief medical officer. The upstart is hoping to commercialize a deep-learning algorithm that could process a whole biopsy slide and classify it as \u201csuspicious\u201d or \u201cnot suspicious\u201d for prostate cancer. Klimstra was part of a team of researchers at MSKCC who described such a system in a peer-reviewed study in Nature Medicine in 2019. Paige also offers a similar tool for studying breast cancer tissues that is available right now to beta testers and hasn\u2019t been officially approved by the FDA. The Register has asked Paige for further comment. \u00ae<\/p>\n