An artificial-intelligence system in China is quietly spotting one of the most lethal cancers before patients—or their doctors—even know something is wrong. The New York Times reports on promising early results from a clinical trial being run at a hospital in the eastern city of Ningbo, where the tool has detected about two dozen cases, 14 of which were in the early stages. Pancreatic cancer has a low five-year survival rate of about 10% largely because it is usually found too late. "I think you can 100 percent say AI saved their lives," says Dr. Zhu Kelei.
The tool called PANDA—short for pancreatic cancer detection with artificial intelligence, and developed by researchers under the tech giant Alibaba—scans routine, low-radiation CT images that doctors ordered for other reasons. The clinical trial follows a 2023 Nature Medicine study suggesting that the system correctly picked up pancreatic lesions in 93% of CT scans. The big drawback: False alarms that could ratchet up patient anxiety and lead to expensive and unnecessary follow-up tests. PANDA has issued about 1,400 alerts in Ningbo, but doctors later determined that only about 300 merited further testing.
A US surgeon at the University of California San Diego tells the Times that a well-trained radiologist should have been able to detect the tumors caught by PANDA, suggesting the system may be most valuable in hospitals with fewer specialists. It's possible the system might be in use at US hospitals in the near future. The Food and Drug Administration granted PANDA "breakthrough device" status in April, speeding its regulatory review, the South China Morning Post previously reported. (Former Sen. Ben Sasse recently announced his terminal diagnosis with pancreatic cancer.)
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