Artificial intelligence may obviate biopsy need in ulcerative colitis

"The interpretation of endoscopic images is subjective and based on the experience of individual endoscopists, thereby making the standardization of evaluation and real-time characterization challenging," says lead author of the study Kento Takenaka. "To address this, we sought to develop a deep neural network (DNN) system for consistent, objective, and real-time analysis of endoscopic images from patients with UC (DNUC)."

To do this, the researchers developed a system with DNNs to evaluate endoscopic images from patients with UC. DNNs are a type of AI machine-learning method that is based on the construction of artificial neural networks.

"We constructed the DNUC algorithm, using 40,758 images of colonoscopies and 6885 biopsy results from 2012 patients with UC," says senior author Mamoru Watanabe. "This comprised the training set for machine-learning, which enabled the algorithm to learn to accurately evaluate and classify the data".

The researchers then validated the accuracy of the DNUC algorithm using 4187 endoscopic images and 4104 biopsy specimens from 875 patients with UC.

"We found that the DNUC achieved a level of accuracy that was equivalent to that of expert endoscopists," says Takenaka. "Thus, our system was able to predict histologic remission from UC using endoscopic images only, as opposed to both histological and endoscopic data. This represents an important development given the costs and risks associated with biopsies."

The DNUC may be able to identify UC patients who are in remission without requiring them to undergo biopsy collection and analysis. This could save time and money for medical institutions, and limit exposure to invasive medical procedures for individuals with UC.

For more details click on the link: https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2020.02.012