A new British artificial intelligence system can predict with 92% accuracy which people with memory problems will eventually develop dementia within the next two years. This is another indication that artificial intelligence has enormous potential to make it possible to diagnose various diseases at an earlier stage. The goal is not only to diagnose impending dementia more early, but also to reduce the number of people who are misdiagnosed with dementia.
Researchers at the University of Exeter, led by Professor David Lewellin, who published the study in the American medical journal JAMA Network Open, used data from 15,307 people with a mean age of 72 years and memory problems (of whom 1,568 diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia within the next two years) to “train” the new machine learning algorithm to recognize the precursor symptoms of dementia. The “smart” system has learned to detect hidden clues in the data, which the human eye, even a neurologist or other specialist, can not recognize.
Read the scientific study in English here.
In addition, 130 diagnoses (8% of the total) turned out to be incorrect, as they were later overturned. Of these false positive cases of dementia, the algorithm was able to correctly diagnose that 84% actually had nothing to do with dementia. Therefore the system can not only distinguish who may develop neurodegeneration of the brain in the future, but also improve the accuracy of the diagnosis, so that someone who is not is not diagnosed as a patient.
“We are now able to teach computers to accurately predict who is going to develop dementia within the next two years. “We are also pleased to see that the machine learning method we have developed is capable of identifying patients who may have been misdiagnosed,” said Lewellin.
The new system is to be further studied to evaluate its practical utility and confirm that it can clinically improve the diagnosis and treatment of dementia.
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