Smart software can diagnose prostate cancer: Study

This holds out the possibility of streamlining and eliminating variation in the process of cancer diagnosis. It may also help overcome any local shortage of trained pathologists.

In the longer term it may lead to automated or partially-automated prostate cancer diagnosis.

Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer, with around 1.1 million diagnoses ever year. Confirmation of the diagnosis normally requires a biopsy sample, which is then examined by a pathologist.

Now an artificial intelligence learning system, presented at the European Association of Urology Conference in Copenhagen, has shown similar levels of accuracy to a human pathologist. In addition, the software can accurately classify the level of malignancy of the cancer, so eliminating the variability which can creep into human diagnosis.

"This is not going to replace a human pathologist. We still need an experienced pathologist to take responsibility for the final diagnosis. What it will do is help pathologists make better, faster diagnosis, as well as eliminating the day-to-day variation in judgement which can creep into human evaluations," said Hongqian Guo from Nanjing University in China.

The researchers took 918 prostate whole mount pathology section samples from 283 patients, and ran these through the analysis system, with the software gradually learning and improving diagnosis.