Meet our featured researcher
Using artificial intelligence to give men a safe and accurate diagnosis
MRI scans are central to the way prostate cancer is diagnosed, and making the scans as clear as possible maximises the chances of detecting prostate cancer before it has spread.
Dr Barrett, a consultant radiologist from the University of Cambridge, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a tool that could ensure MRI scans are consistently high quality.
He has collected hundreds of MRI scans from 80 hospitals around the UK to be assessed by multiple expert radiologists, and is using them as examples to train the AI tool to recognise what a 'high quality' MRI scan looks like. Once the tool has been trained, Dr Barrett and his team will test it on MRI scans from 52 men to see if it can recognise high and low quality in completely new scans.
If we know we normally produce high-quality MRI images, but in this case the image is lower quality, the AI tool could help us decide what to do next. Should we run another scan right now, saving the man from going home and waiting for another appointment? Should we keep a closer eye on the man with regular PSA blood tests? Or should we go straight to biopsy?
Dr Barrett hopes the tool could even make recommendations about how to improve the MRI scan quality.
Currently, this feedback depends on a whole team of specialists including radiographers, physicists and MRI scanner manufacturers. But not all hospitals will have the full range of specialists available. Incorporating AI could mean hospitals around the country have that expertise at their fingertips.
Of course, with the huge potential of AI, Dr Barrett believes this tool is just the beginning:
AI could help at almost every stage. Right now, for example, when we’re reviewing MRI scans, the one that comes to us first gets reported first. But there might be a scan further down the list that has more urgent findings. An AI tool could assess the scans as they come in, to make sure the ones that need reviewing first go to the top of the radiologist’s pile.
Dr Barrett's team are also looking at ways the AI tool could improve the quality of MRI scans beyond the limits of existing machines.
Even with the best MRI scanners, there is a trade-off between scan time, image resolution, and image 'noise'.
To make sure small tumours aren't missed a higher resolution scan is required, meaning either a longer scan time, which increases the chance of a man's bowel moving and blurring the image, or letting more noise creep in.
Essentially, you can’t get something for nothing – if you change one factor, you compromise another. Unless you have AI in your corner. With AI post-processing, you can run that high-resolution scan in a standard amount of time, knowing you’ll get a noisier image – and afterwards, take the noise out of the image.
Dr Barrett and his team have already begun testing this approach on their MRI scanners and found that AI enables them to get high-resolution scans on their older scanners with less powerful magnets - something that could benefit hospitals across the country.
This revolutionary research could ensure that no man’s future depends on the chance of a ‘high quality’ MRI scan – and could help men receive an earlier diagnosis when their prostate cancer can be treated more easily.
And the results?
We shared Dr Barrett's work with our supporters, along with the story of a man who was diagnosed with stage 4 incurable prostate cancer who might have benefited from improvements to scanning and diagnosis.
This appeal has already inspired supporters to donate an incredible £372,000 to support our work.
Thank you!
A huge thank you to Dr Tristan Barrett and his team for their cooperation and support throughout the process.
