AI tool helps researchers treat child epilepsy

AFP | Tokyo

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An artificial intelligence tool that can detect tiny, hard-to-spot brain malformations in children with epilepsy could help patients access life-changing surgery quicker, Australian researchers said on Wednesday.

It is the latest example of how AI, which can crunch vast amounts of data, is changing healthcare by assisting doctors with diagnoses.

Epilepsy has several different causes, and overall around three in 10 cases are down to structural abnormalities in the brain, experts say.

These are often missed on MRI scans -- especially the smallest lesions, sometimes hidden at the bottom of a brain fold.

A team led by Emma Macdonald-Laurs, a paediatric neurologist at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, trained an AI tool on child brain images to find lesions the size of a blueberry or smaller.

"They're frequently missed and many children are not considered as surgical candidates," Macdonald-Laurs told a briefing ahead of the publication of her team's study in the journal Epilepsia.

"The tool doesn't replace radiologists or epilepsy doctors, but it's like a detective that helps us put the puzzle pieces together quicker so we can offer potentially life-changing surgery," she said.

Of the patients who took part, with conditions known as cortical dysplasia and focal epilepsy, 80 percent had previously had an MRI scan come back as normal.

When the researchers used the AI tool to analyse both MRI and another type of medical scan called a PET, its success rate was 94 percent for one test group and 91 percent for another.