We are creating some awesome events for you. Kindly bear with us.

HKU Scientists Develop AI-Based Web Tool

Image Credits: HKU, Press Release

Researchers from the Faculty of Dentistry and the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKU); Department of Pathology, Queen Mary Hospital, HK; and College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University, Queensland collaborated to develop a web platform that can be applied to automatically generate an individualiSed prediction of the risk of oral cancer occurrence in those with OL or OLM for up to 20 years following diagnosis. The results are published in the journal Cancers in an article entitled “Deep learning predicts the malignant-transformation-free survival of oral potentially malignant disorders”.

The freely available web tool, based on the artificial intelligence algorithm ‘DeepSurv’ was trained and tested with data from patients with OL/OLM treated in Hong Kong (716 patients) and Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK (382 patients). As the patients have already been under review for many years, their true risk levels were already known, and the study showed that the artificial intelligent model was able to accurately predict their risk levels at different time points during their follow-up hospital visits.

The DeepSurv algorithm was selected due to its superior performance for the use of routine demographic, clinical, pathological, and treatment information of these patients for cancer risk prediction following a series of validation exercises.

On a validation subset of the Hong Kong cohort, ‘DeepSurv’ was able to predict the correct cancer risk level for 95% of the cases. This was according to an integrated Brier score of 0.04, with a score below 0.25 generally depicting a tool that may be useful in real-world applications. The algorithm is further able to generate correct risk levels for 82% of the patients in the British cohort which suggests its utility in other populations as well.

To expatiate on how the interactive web tool functions, it requires 26 pieces of information on the demography, clinical and pathological description of the disease, and treatment received by the OL/OLM patient. The predicted output from the web tool includes a curve from which the different risk levels (vertical axis) can be visualised at each time point (horizontal axis). These predicted risk levels are accurate up to 17 years from the time that the information was entered.

This will assist health professionals in the selection and prioritisation of treatment strategies and close-monitoring schedules for high-risk patients, especially in resource-limited hospitals. Ultimately, this is expected to improve the currently available methods of prevention and early diagnosis of oral cancer. The prediction curve may also be used for individual cancer risk estimation and to inform health professionals when to commence very close monitoring of patients when a certain risk level is reached.

For OL/OLM patients, risk awareness may motivate them to regularly attend routine follow-up visits and allow them to make informed decisions when providing consent for biopsy when required. Of note, the predicted risk curve may change with varying input data such as smoking and alcohol drinking status, parts of the mouth that are affected, treatment received, lesion recurrence, and the severity of epithelial dysplasia during treatment monitoring.

Dr Richard Su, Clinical Associate Professor in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS), Faculty of Dentistry, HKU, who led the study stated that while the web tool has been found promising based on the team’s validation exercises, users should know that it is still primarily a research-based tool and requires further prospective optimisation. She also noted that since cancer development involves many alterations at the molecular level that may occur before disease diagnosis, in the future, the team will optimise the web tool by including information on molecular biomarkers for cancer development in OL and OLM.

It is expected that the inclusion of the information in the web tool will improve the precision of the predicted risk estimates. The updated web tool will then be evaluated for its clinical efficacy and its impact on the care of OL and OLM in a clinical trial.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Send this to a friend