Cancer is one of the normal reasons of death, however the different types of cancer makes it difficult to detect a ‘specific one’. Therefore making it a bit challengeable for Scientists. From United States, a team of researchers has developed a blood test that can detect early-stage tumors by utilizing AI.

Distinguishing cancer in its early stages has been a need for scientists around the globe

A study Annals of Oncology, publicized how Artificial Intelligence AI, capable of identifying the 50 types of cancer in a person’s body by looking some chemical changes in the blood, also known as Methylation.

Methylation is a process that happens when methyl groups are added to the DNA molecule. It’s a genetic mechanism that use cells to control gene expression and tells whether a gene is ‘active’ or ‘inactive’.

According to Dana Farber, “Our previous work indicated that methylation based tests outperform traditional DNA sequencing approaches to detecting multiple forms of cancer in blood samples”.

How it All Goes?

The team took the blood samples from 6698 patients. 2482 patients are diagnosed as cancer patients and 4207 are diagnosed as non-cancer patients. Only 0.7 percent False Positive Rate FPR appears, meaning that they have no cancer but showed they had.

To test the algorithm, researchers classifies 1,200 new samples, and the results are promising.

The AI have detected 93 percent of stage IV cancers, 81 percent of stage III, 43 percent of stage II, and 18 percent of stage I cancers. When it detects cancer, the AI was able to identify the location of the tumor with 93 percent precision.

The outcomes also highlights some other disadvantages of the test. For instance, the test was less precise for early detection.

The researchers are still confident of the method that could be useful for bigger number of population. Recognition of initial stages of cancers is still low. However Identifying 18 percent of tumor in early stages could still be obliging. It’s inspiring to see such promising results and further preparation might make the Artificial Intelligence improved at identifying cancer in the early stages.

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Resource: Annalsofoncology.org, bbc.com, newatlas.com