AIM has talked about Google’s new research in machine learning and how it helps in early detection of diabetic retinopathy. Led by Google Brain AI research group, this research will soon start reaping results at hospitals across India. At a recent conference, Google executives revealed the “work has already begun on integrating the technology into a chain of eye hospitals in India.”
Google researchers had worked closely with doctors in India and the US to create a development dataset of 128,000 images which were each evaluated by 3-7 ophthalmologists from a panel of 54 ophthalmologists. This dataset was used to train a deep neural network to detect referable diabetic retinopathy
According to Lily Peng, product manager at Google Brain AI research, “India is one of the many places around the world where a lack of ophthalmologists means many diabetics don’t get the recommended annual screening for diabetic retinopathy”. Automated DR screening methods with high accuracy have the strong potential to assist doctors in evaluating more patients and quickly routing those who need help to a specialist.
Over the last few years, Google has been working with doctors and clinicians to explore faster treatment of diabetic retinopathy. To fast track detection, Google Research and these issues of limited time and diagnostic variability, researchers have built an automated detection algorithm that can naturally complement pathologists’ workflow. In a blog, Google explains the algorithm has been designed to be highly sensitive to make it easier for pathologists to find even small instances of breast cancer metastasis in lymph node biopsies.
Earlier, the Google research team partnered with world-class medical researchers and bioinformaticians at UC San Francisco, Stanford Medicine and University of Chicago Medicine to explore how machine learning combined with clinical expertise could improve patient outcomes, avoid costly incidents and save lives. Google’s ground breaking research on Deep Learning for Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
