Pancreatic Cancer Breakthrough: Mayo Clinic AI Model Gives Cancer Fight Head Start

Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News)- Mayo Clinic has announced a breakthrough that could lead to a significantly earlier detection of one of the deadliest cancers. 

See Also: Mayo Clinic Gets $75 Million Donation for Rochester Expansion 

A news release says the Mayo Clinic-developed Artificial Intelligence model can help doctors detect the cancer before tumors are visible. 

The Rochester-based healthcare giant is calling the findings “a milestone in Mayo Clinic's multiyear research effort to enable earlier detection of one of the deadliest cancers.” 

Mayo Clinic Announces AI-Fueled Breakthrough in Early Pancreatic Cancer Detection

Mayo says its AI model, called Radiomics-based Early Detection Model (REDMOD), was used to analyze nearly 2,000 CT scans from patients who eventually were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. 

The scans used in the study were all originally interpreted as normal. 

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REDMOD was able to identify pre diagnosis cancers in 73% of the scans, with a median time of 16 months prior to the clinical diagnosis, the news release says. 

Mayo says the REDMOD made the identifications at nearly double the detection rate of specialists who were not assisted by the AI tool. Mayo also says REDMOD  detected nearly three times as many early cancers from scans made two years prior to the diagnosis. 

"The greatest barrier to saving lives from pancreatic cancer has been our inability to see the disease when it is still curable," says Ajit Goenka, M.D., the study's senior author, and a Mayo Clinic radiologist and nuclear medicine specialist. 

Mayo says more than 85% of pancreatic cancer patients don’t get the diagnosis until the cancer has spread and that the disease has a 15% five-year survival rate.