According to reports in the media, Google and the US Department of Defense (DoD) have teamed together to develop a microscope that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help in the detection of cancer. The pricing range for the AR microscope (ARM) for healthcare systems is probably between $90,000 and $100,000. The ARM has showed potential, and it is probably going to be a helpful tool for pathologists who do not have easy access to a second opinion, claims a CNBC report. The partnership’s goal is to support physicians working in smaller labs that are experiencing an employee shortage and seeing an increase in number of patients.
However, according to Dr. Niels Olson, the Chief Medical Officer of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) at the Department of Defense, the ARM is only meant to be a backup for pathologists and cannot take the role of the medical professionals themselves.
The ARM is attached to a boxy computer tower that holds the AI models and resembles a typical microscope with a huge eyepiece and tray for looking at conventional glass slides. The AI can outline where cancer is found when a glass slide is produced and fixed under the microscope. Pathologists can view the outline on a different monitor and through their eyepiece as a bright green line. The CNBC report added that the AI also reveals the cancer’s level of aggressiveness and produces a black-and-white heat map on the monitor that depicts the cancer’s border in pixelated form.
In order to diagnose breast cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer, and mitosis, the company has released four algorithms for the ARM, according to Aashima Gupta, Global Director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud. The DIU data is used to train the AI models, and according to Gupta, neither Google workers nor the organization’s infrastructure have access to it.
This fall, the DIU plans to make the ARM accessible to all government workers via the General Services Administration website.
The microscope’s obvious initial use case, according to Dr. Olson, would be in smaller, more remote labs. It could also be useful for pathology residents who are still in training.
One of the thirteen ARMs that are now operational is housed in a Mitre facility outside of Washington, DC. A nonprofit organization called Mitre collaborates with government agencies to tackle major technological issues. The newspaper did an ARM demonstration using the Mitre facilities earlier in August.
