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Apr26

Artificial intelligence -- commonly known as A.I. -- is already exceeding human abilities. A.I. is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.Self-driving cars use A.I. to perform some tasks more safely than people. E-commerce companies use A.I. to tailor product ads to customers' tastes quicker and with more precision than any breathing marketing analyst.

Soon, A.I. will be used to "read" biomedical images more accurately than medical personnel alone -- providing better early cervical cancer detection at lower cost than current methods and it does not  mean radiologists and pathologist will soon be out of business but absolutely raising a challenge before them ."Humans and computers are very complementary," says Sharon Xiaolei Huang, associate professor of computer science and engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. "That's what A.I. is all about."

      Now, as a result of 10 years work, Huang and her team have created a cervical cancer screening technique that, built on image-based classifiers constructed from a large number of Cervigram images. Cervigrams are images taken by digital cervicography, a noninvasive visual examination method that takes a photograph of the cervix. The images, when read, are designed to detect cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), which is the potentially precancerous change and abnormal growth of squamous cells on the surface of the cervix.has the potential to perform as well or better than human interpretation on other traditional screening results, such as Pap tests and HPV tests -- at a much lower cost. The technique could be used in less-developed countries, where 80% of deaths from cervical cancer occur.          

         Because Huang's technique has been shown, via an analysis of the very large dataset, to be both more sensitive -- able to detect abnormality -- as well as more specific (fewer false positives), it could be used to improve cervical cancer screening in developed countries like the U.S too."Our method would be an effective low-cost addition to a battery of tests helping to lower the false positive rate since it provides 10% better sensitivity and specificity than any other screening method, including Pap and HPV tests," says Huang.



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