AI and Vandy Health: Vanderbilt explores how AI can one day cure disease and save lives
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Artificial intelligence is spreading fast in fields like education, communication and the arts, but according to experts, the technology is moving a bit slower in the medical world. News 2 took a look at how AI can transform healthcare and eventually save lives.
At a computer lab at Vanderbilt University, PhD students have been hard at work.
“Today, I pulled this up to show you guys just what a typical diffusion image would look like,” said Nancy Newlin, a computer science PhD student.
However, this isn’t any college computer lab; this is the future. Students like Newlin are learning how artificial intelligence can be applied to healthcare.
“It can pull out trends that we don’t see personally, but we could see if we had infinite intellect,” said Newlin. “This is a particular type of MRI called a diffusion weighted MRI…you get to really see this person’s brain in a 3D model.”
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“We have just approached the shore, and we’ve just started to discover what computers can do,” said Vanderbilt Professor Bennett Landman, who teaches in the department of electrical and computer engineering.
According to Landman, when it comes to AI, the medical field lagged a bit behind other industries, not quite having enough pictures, MRIs, ultrasound and medical images to build AI’s knowledge. However, the professor said that’s changing, and AI is moving full steam ahead in healthcare.
“This is the most exciting time it has been to be in my field,” Landman said. “The pace of discovery, the pace of the types of questions we can ask, what kinds of answers we can do, is just outstanding.”
PhD student Lucas Remedios is excited to see what AI can do for medical imaging and diagnosing disease more quickly. He’s investigating Crohn’s disease, for which there is no cure.
“So here we’re using AI, and we’re able to actually go in and classify these nuclei based on what cell type they are,” said Remedios.
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“If we had a doctor do this, it would probably take a tremendous amount of time to go in and label each nucleus, and they have a lot of really important things that they can be spending their time on, so when we can use AI on these types of problems, we can help the doctors focus on things that are really important for doctors to do,” he continued.
“The AI can go through and find abnormalities across an entire field at gigapixel images,” Landman explained. “This is just not humanly possible.”
Not humanly possible — a phrase that you a hear a lot when talking about AI’s potential. However, these experts also don’t see AI one day replacing human doctors and nurses.
“There’s a lot of potential for how AI can change the way doctors talk to each other, and the way that we use information across the healthcare system,” said Landman.
“This is a tool. This is an AI model. It’s making predictions at each cell, predicting what is. Doesn’t mean it’s right,” Remedios described. “We need the real medical expertise that a doctor has to be able to make sense of these types of tools in the hospital, and to make sure that things are working as we expect.”
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