EARLY* -CANCER SPOTTING- ELIXIR : A.I. CHINA'S ESSAY

PANCREATIC CANCER is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, with a five year survival rate. of around 10 percent - largely because the earliest detection is so hard. Symptoms often do not appear until the cancer has advanced.

TESTS used to confirm its presence, such as contrast CT scans, involves large amounts of radiation, so many experts advise against widespread screening.

But lower-radiation alternatives such as noncontrast CTs, to identify abnormalities. [ In noncontrast CTs, no contrast dye is injected into patients bloodstreams.]

Artificial Intelligence may just change that. The tool developed at one hospital, developed by researchers affiliated by the tech giant Alibaba, was trained to look for pancreatic cancer in nocontrast CTs.

The tool is called PANDA, short for [ pancreatic cancer detection with Artificial Intelligence.] At the related hospital, where Dr. Zhu works, the Affiliated People's Hospital at Ningbo University in eastern China, doctors started using it as a part of a clinical trial in November 2024.

The tool has since analyzed more than 180,000 abdominal or chest CTs, helping doctors direct about one dozen cases of pancreatic cancer, 14 of which were in the early stage, Dr. Zhu said.

The tool found 20 cases of ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common and deadliest type of pancreatic cancer.

All of those patients had come to the hospital with complaints of bloating or nausea and had not initially seen a pancreatic specialist, Dr. Zhu said. Several of their CT scans had raised no alarms until they were flagged by the AI tool.

'' I think you can 100 percent say that AI saved their lives,'' he said.

In April, Alibaba said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had granted PANDA '' breakthrough device '' status, meaning that its review would be expected to get it to the market.

The World Students Society thanks Vivian Wang, Ningbo, China.