Your Health: Using AI to detect deadly polyps

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - AI is transforming the field of medicine, becoming part of everything from diagnosis to treatment to research.

It gathers vast amounts of medical data to identify patterns, such as which cancers will respond to which treatments better, or which hip replacement will work best for your body type. It’s now working to make colonoscopies better than ever before.

An estimated 106,000 people will be diagnosed with colon cancer this year and 52,000 will die from it. And now doctors are using AI to help detect cancerous polyps.

“GI Genius is an artificial intelligence technology that pulls from a pool of about 13 million pictures of polyps in real-time and helps to identify high-risk tissue in the colon during the procedure,” said Dr. Nate Merriman.

GI Genius works in tandem with traditional colonoscopy. As the endoscopist examines the colon, the GI Genius analyzes the images captured during the procedure to help identify suspicious spots.

A recent study found that the GI Genius scan showed a 14% increase in the detection rate for each physician. Merriman said it could save as many as 18 lives each year.

“That’s significant over just five centers,” Merriman said. “ You imagine how many colonoscopy centers we have in the country, how many patients we could save with this.”

More: Your Health

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