Artificial Intelligence in Practice

37Infervision: Using Artificial Intelligence To Detect Cancer And Strokes

Infervision is a Chinese computer vision specialist that has applied its expertise to potentially save millions of lives by making it possible to detect life-threatening diseases far earlier than has previously been possible.

It uses technology similar to that developed by Google, Facebook and other artificial intelligence (AI) pioneers, which can understand and interpret visual data.

The technology, which the company describes as the world's first AI precision healthcare platform, is already in use at hospitals in China and Japan and could soon be rolled out across the world.

What Problem Is Artificial Intelligence Helping To Solve?

Cancer is the leading cause of death in China, and lung cancer in particular is the country's most deadly disease.¹

Survival rates for most forms of cancer are far higher when it is spotted at an early stage; however, the medical imaging equipment needed to do this is expensive and operating it is a time-consuming process for trained medical technicians.

This means that survival rates in rural areas are often far lower than in cities where equipment and specialists are located.

On top of this, China has a severe shortage of doctors, and radiologists in particular. The country has just 80,000 trained radiologists with the task of examining 1.4 billion radiology scans every year.²

How Is Artificial Intelligence Used In Practice?

Infervision uses deep learning to interpret ...