A new AI tool, DEPLOY, with a commendable 95% accuracy has been developed to fight against brain tumours.
DEPLOY was built in collaboration between the Australian National University (ANU) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the US.
Currently, diagnosing brain tumours often involves a lengthy wait for DNA methylation profiling, a complex and resource-intensive process that can take weeks.
This delay can be agonizing for patients and hinder the timely initiation of treatment, especially for aggressive tumours.
“The current gold standard for identifying different kinds of brain tumours is DNA methylation-based profiling,” explains Dr Danh-Tai Hoang, a researcher at ANU. “But the time it takes to do this kind of testing can be a major drawback, often requiring several weeks or more when patients might be relying on quick decisions on therapies. There’s also a lack of availability of these tests in nearly all hospitals worldwide.”
DEPLOY tackles this challenge by leveraging deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence. It analyzes microscopic images of patient tissue samples (histopathology images) to predict the tumour subtype and infer the DNA methylation state.
This essentially reveals which genes are active within the tumour, important information for doctors to determine the most effective treatment course.
The development of DEPLOY involved a three-pronged approach. The first model classifies brain tumour subtypes directly from the images. The second one focuses on predicting DNA methylation-based on those same images.
Finally, the third model considers patient demographics like age and sex to further refine the tumour classification. In combining these models, DEPLOY achieves almost perfect accuracy.
Researchers precisely tested DEPLOY using data from over 4,000 patients across the US and Europe. The results were outstanding, with DEPLOY consistently achieving a 95% success rate in identifying tumour subtypes. However, the actual potential of DEPLOY goes beyond accuracy.
“Furthermore, when given a subset of 309, particularly difficult-to-classify samples, DEPLOY was able to provide a diagnosis that was more clinically relevant than what was initially provided by pathologists,” highlights Dr Hoang.
This means that DEPLOY can act as a valuable second opinion for pathologists, potentially leading to more precise diagnoses and improved patient outcomes.
Countries with limited access to advanced diagnostic tools, like Nigeria, face a huge burden of brain tumours. The high cost of DNA methylation profiling and the lack of infrastructure often create a diagnostic bottleneck. Here, DEPLOY brings hope.
“So, there’s an urgent need to do something in the meantime, to give the oncologist some initial recommendations on what is the tumour subtype, which in turn may inform on how to tailor the treatment,” explains Dr Kenneth Aldape, Chief of the Laboratory of Pathology at NCI.
Through the elimination of the need for expensive and time-consuming DNA methylation profiling, DEPLOY could expedite diagnoses and ensure that patients receive timely treatment.
DEPLOY’s underlying technology can be adapted to diagnose other cancers, ensuring a future where AI helps in early and accurate cancer detection. This, in turn, can lead to better treatment outcomes and a brighter future for countless patients around the world.
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