Using AI to diagnose brain disease in seconds
Posted on: Tuesday, August 8th, 2023
Stroke has occurred several times in your family. Aunt Mary suffered hers at the dinner table on a holiday. The fork she was holding fell to the table. Grandmother Sadie’s happened during her last years when you were away at college. Her thinking was never sharp again.
Yes, your family history includes stroke and dementia — and you seek an evaluation by experts at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, also called UT Health San Antonio. The health science center is home to the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases. The Biggs Institute is a national center of excellence that, together with UT Rio Grande Valley, is the state’s only Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) as designated by the National Institute on Aging.
In the neurology clinic at UT Health San Antonio’s Medical Arts and Research Center (MARC), your doctor recommends a brain MRI. You have it done in the imaging suite a few floors down.
What happens next is a quantum leap above standard diagnostic methods employed in neurology clinics for the last century.
Professors at UT Health San Antonio have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that accurately counts brain lesions on MRIs in seconds. Because of this, the neurologist is able to tell you the results of your scan before you leave the doctor’s office. You have enlarged spaces around the arteries and veins in your brain. The spaces, which number 600 on MRIs, are filled with cerebrospinal fluid. The neurologist recommends preventive care to guard against a stroke.
To lean more about this AI tool, read the full article at the UT Health San Antonio Newsroom.