Researchers in Boston are on the verge of what they say is a major advancement in lung cancer screening: Artificial intelligence that can detect early signs of the disease years before doctors would find it on a CT scan.
The new AI tool, called Sybil, was developed by scientists at the Mass General Cancer Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In one study, it was shown to accurately predict whether a person will develop lung cancer in the next year 86% to 94% of the time.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends that adults at risk for lung cancer get a low-dose CT scan to screen for the disease annually.
But even with regular screening, the most skilled radiologist’s eye can’t spot everything — and that’s where Sybil comes in.
“The naked eye cannot see everything,” said Dr. Lecia Sequist, an oncologist and the program director of the Cancer Early Detection and Diagnostics Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The AI that we developed is looking at the scan in a completely different way than a human radiologist looks at it.”
The tool, experts say, could be a leap forward in the early detection of lung cancer, the third most common cancer in the United States, according to the CDC. The disease is the leading cause of cancer death, according to the American Cancer Society, which estimates that this year there will be more than 238,000 new cases of lung cancer and more than 127,000 deaths.
Sybil is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use outside clinical trials, but if approved, it could play a unique role. Ref:
Special report by Berkeley Lovelace Jr., John Torres, M.D., Marina Kopf and Patrick Martin/NBC News
