“Proscia’s technology signals an exciting advancement as pathologists increasingly turn to AI to deliver on their commitment to excellent patient care,” said Dr. Kiran Motaparthi, Director of Dermatopathology and Clinical Associate Professor of Dermatology at the University of Florida.
Proscia®, a leading provider of digital and computational pathology solutions, has released study results on artificial intelligence that predicts diagnostic agreement for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. The potential of the technology to improve diagnostic accuracy for melanoma and other diseases was highlighted in findings presented at the European Conference on Computer Vision.
The retrospective study was done at the University of Florida and Thomas Jefferson University. Three to five dermatopathologists evaluated each image to establish a rate. There was a correlation between the technology’s predictions and the dermatopathologists’ rates.
In addition to this study, Proscia plans to conduct additional research illustrating the potential benefits of AI in helping pathologists to diagnose melanoma, including:
- Lowering the misdiagnosis rate for difficult cases. Melanoma often presents like benign mimickers, causing pathologists to disagree on its diagnosis 40% of the time.[2] As cases are often evaluated by only one pathologist, AI that predicts concordance with multiple experts could help to improve diagnostic accuracy by serving as a second set of eyes.
- Accelerating turnaround times for critical results. Over 15 million skin biopsies are taken annually in the United States[3], each of which may display one of hundreds of diagnoses. AI that predicts diagnostic agreement could flag cases that were likely to be challenging, driving efficiency gains by suggesting additional testing to provide a more complete look prior to pathologist review.
- Reducing costs and distress for patients. Frequent over-diagnosis of melanoma not only results in additional costs for health systems but also leads patients to pay for unnecessary treatment and cope with the stress of believing they have a life-threatening disease.[4] Increased diagnostic accuracy could help to eliminate these burdens.
Melanoma can be difficult to diagnose, according to Dr. Kiran Motaparthi, Director of dermatopathology and clinical associate professor of skin diseases at the University of Florida. Proscia’s technology signals an exciting advancement as pathologists increasingly turn to artificial intelligence to deliver on their commitment to excellent patient care.
According to Proscia, the same artificial intelligence could be extended to other diagnoses that show low pathologist agreement. Breast cancer staging is used to evaluate the aggressiveness of the disease, as well as the Gleason grading of the disease. Both play a role in treatment decisions.
The lead author of the study said that the study laid the groundwork for a new use case of artificial intelligence in pathology that could have a huge impact on patient outcomes. Our technology uses self-supervised learning to recognize incredibly subtle patterns, demonstrating the power of one of the most advanced approaches in artificial intelligence.
About Proscia
Proscia is a company that is changing the way we understand diseases like cancer. The 150-year-old standard of research and diagnosis is moving towards a data-driven discipline thanks to the Concentriq platform and powerful applications. Over 10 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies rely on Proscia’s software every day. Visit proscia.com for more information.
