Using artificial intelligence to catch cancer in CT scans

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the U.S. in both men and women—127,000 people will die from it this year. It’s often caught in a later stage, but when doctors detect it early, it can be cured. Researchers are now looking at a program using artificial intelligence to catch the tiniest cancers that might be easily fixed.

Steven Porter is his family’s historian, curating old photos and tracing his roots on genealogy websites. Porter says there’s no history of cancer in his family, but as a former smoker, his doctor advised him to get screened.

“In 2022, I went, and that’s when they found the solid nodule,” Porter said. “They took enough of it during the biopsy that they knew they had it all.”

Porter knows he’s lucky, and he’s in the minority: Only 6% of all Americans eligible for lung cancer screening with a low-dose CT scan actually get it done. But now, there’s a new program to detect tiny lung spots, or nodules, that might otherwise go undetected.

Ohio State researchers and clinicians have created a system to evaluate all CT scans, not just those of lung cancer patients.

“If they’ve had a heart attack, if they’ve had a motor vehicle or accident, if they’ve had pneumonia and they undergo a CT scan,” said Dr. Jasleen Pannu, an interventional pulmonologist at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.

The team uses automated natural language processing tools, “artificial intelligence,” to evaluate written radiology reports.

“If there is a radiologist that has reported a lung nodule of a certain size, these can be flagged and followed up,” Pannu said.

Pannu says when nodules are detected unexpectedly, the patient’s CT scan is further evaluated so they won’t fall through the cracks. Steven Porter’s screening was scheduled, but, either way, he knows the importance of catching cancer early.

“I was feeling fine,” Porter said. “I wouldn’t have went, and, you know, next year,it may have been too late.”

Pannu says 1,000 new early-stage cancers could be caught by screening lung nodules found unexpectedly at Ohio State alone. She says when patients come into the hospital for emergency treatment and undergo CT scans, tiny nodules can be overlooked because the medical team is focused on the emergency at hand.