Researchers explore AI’s potential to analyze medical images

A team of researchers from Singapore and the United States wrote about how their recent work with artificial intelligence (AI) could help healthcare providers with image analysis, sharing their analysis in a study published by Nature Medicine.

Author Philippe Burlina, MS, PhD, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Howard County, Maryland, previously worked with colleagues on automating the diagnosis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

“We’ve been able to show the feasibility of automated fine-grained classification of AMD severity that only highly trained ophthalmologists can achieve,” Burlina said in a prepared statement. “These techniques have the potential to provide individuals with automated grading of images to identify AMD or monitor those individuals with earlier stages of AMD for the onset of the more advanced stages when prompt treatment may be indicated to reduce the risk of blindness.”

Now, as part of a collaboration with researchers from the Singapore National Eye Center, Burlina and colleagues reviewed recent progress made with AI and how it could improve patient care in the near future.

“The end goal is to help clinicians and guide treatment,” Burlina explained in the same statement.