Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have investigated how well different AI models can predict the prognosis of triple-negative breast cancer by analyzing certain immune cells inside the tumor. The study, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine , is an important step towards using AI in cancer care to improve patient health. Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes are a type of immune cell that plays an important role in fighting cancer.
When they are present in a tumor, it means that the immune system is trying to attack and destroy the cancer cells. These immune cells can be important in predicting how a patient with so-called triple-negative breast cancer will respond to treatment and how the disease will progress. But when pathologists assess the immune cells, the results can vary.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help standardise and automate this process, but it has been difficult to demonstrate that AI works well enough to be used in healthcare. Compared ten AI models The researchers tested ten different AI models and compared their ability to analyze tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in triple-negative breast cancer tissue samples. The results showed that the AI models varied in their analytical performance.
Despite these differences, eight of the ten models showed good prognostic ability, meaning they were able to predict patients' future health in a similar way. Even models trained on fewer samples showed good prognostic ability, suggesting that tumor-infiltratin.
