AIIMS launches AI-based platform for Cancer Diagnosis

New Delhi [India], February 2 : To exploit the power of AI in healthcare, AIIMS, New Delhi, in collaboration with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Pune, has recently launched an AI platform, iOncology.ai, for facilitating early detection of Cancer, the official statement released by AIIMS Delhi said.
Cancer is globally estimated to be the most fatal disease than those from cardiovascular (Lancet, 2019) in high-income countries (HICs), and middle-income countries (MICs).
According to the Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) estimates, there were 19.3 million incident cancer cases worldwide for the year 2020. India ranked third after China and the United States of America.
A recent study published in the Lancet predicted that cancer cases in India would increase to 2.08 million, accounting for a rise of 57.5 per cent in 2040 from 2020. In India, over 8 lakh deaths were caused due to Cancer in the year 2022. Late detection of cancer remains the main cause of death.
It is globally estimated that out of 80% of cases reported late, only 20% survive. However, 20% of cases detected at an early stage have a survival rate of 80% or higher. Early diagnosis is thus the key to reducing fatalities due to Cancer. One of the key issues in manual diagnosis of cancer is reporting false negatives, meaning falsely declaring a cancer patient as healthy.
The use of AI significantly helps in reducing such false negatives.
According to the official statement released by AIIMS Delhi, at the core of this platform lies a sophisticated AI system capable of analyzing complex medical data, including diagnosis, with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency. iOncology.ai platform encapsulates deep learning models.
As the volume of data, both clinical and radiological/ histopathology images, increases, this platform thus has the capability of Self-learning to constantly improve its outcome.
As breast and ovarian cancers are reported to be the most common cause of cancer amongst women in India, the first application of the iOncology.ai platform has been done by AIIMS in these two domains.
Accordingly, the Learning Models used by the platform have been specially tailored for early detection of breast and ovarian cancer.
The present system has built a large data set of about half a million radiological and histopathological images. This data has been collected during the examination and diagnosis of about ~1500 patient cases of breast and ovarian cancer over a period in AIIMS.
The AI platform was successfully used by the Department of Gynaecology and Dr Brarich/NCI of AIIMS on actual patients to validate the clinical examination and diagnosis.
Encouraged by its success, the AI platform has since been implemented at 5 district hospitals in the country.
The AI platform was showcased recently at the Med-Hackathon event during Research Day celebrations at AIIMS on 30th January. More than a hundred participants (Clinicians as well as Researchers) interacted with the iOncology.ai platform and showed keen interest in this innovative development.
The platform's user-friendly design and robust performance with a high level of accuracy were highly appreciated by the visiting Cancer experts during this event. Based on the response of these experts, AIIMS is looking forward to partnering with several other Cancer hospitals and research centres in the country. As this is an indigenously developed technology, it will be easy for AIIMS to make this platform available to these organizations.
iOncology.ai platform is the outcome of a successful collaborative R&D initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology with AIIMS, New Delhi, and CDAC, Pune.