AI ‘learns’ to spot early bowel cancer

ARTIFICIAL intelligence could soon be used to spot bowel cancers in all NHS hospitals. Currently, doctors survey the bowel using a camera inserted through the back passage, but in one in ten cases the growths are so small that they fail to spot them.

However, a new system being trialled at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth uses a computer system called GI Genius, which has ‘learned’ to spot tiny amounts of abnormal tissue on the camera’s images, diagnosing almost a fifth more cancers.

If it detects cancerous or pre-cancerous growths, a green square will pop up on the images highlighting the area.

Dr Rehan Haidry, a gastroenterologist from University College Hospital in London, says: ‘In the next year or so I’ve no doubt these machines will be in most NHS hospitals, rapidly speeding up diagnosis and, ultimately, saving lives.’