Physicians treating patients with early-stage lung cancer face a conundrum: choosing potentially helpful yet toxic therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation or immunotherapy to knock out the cancer and lessen the risk of it spreading to the brain, or waiting to see if lung surgery alone proves sufficient.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. and worldwide. Most lung cancers are characterized as non-small cell lung cancers, which are largely, but not exclusively, caused by smoking. For early-stage cancer patients, tumors are confined to the lung, and surgery is recommended as a first line of treatment. Roughly 30% of such patients progress to advanced stages, when the cancer spreads to the lymph nodes and other organs.
The algorithm was able to predict the eventual development of brain cancer with 87% accuracy. In comparison, four pathologists who participated in the study were an average of 57.3% accurate. Importantly, the algorithm was highly accurate in predicting which patients would not develop brain metastasis.
"This study started as an attempt to find predictive biomarkers," said Yang."But we couldn't find any. Instead, we found that AI has the potential to make predictions about cancer progression using biopsy samples that are already being collected for diagnosis. If we can get to a prediction accuracy that will allow us to use this algorithm clinically and not have to resort to expensive biomarkers, we are talking about significant ramifications in cost-effectiveness.