Radiomics mainstreams artificial intelligence capabilities, transforming medical imaging to foster accurate and timely diagnostics and treatments.
FREMONT, CA: Diagnostics and treatment have undergone sea changes in recent years. The field which was dominated by traditional medical technologies is now on the cusp of artificial intelligence-driven changes. The area of radiology has also come under the influence of advancement, leading to the emergence of radiomics. The development has been helping the medical industry in dealing with the imminent shortage of qualified radiologists. Innovators have put their brains together and taken diagnostic scanning to the next level with radiomics. Radiomics is still in a developmental phase, but it has already contributed to the healthcare industry. Some ways in which the technology is helping medical fraternity is mentioned in the list below.
• Immunohistochemical Evaluations
Patients can be checked for immunohistochemical (IHC) characteristics with the help of radiomics-based imaging. Medical researchers have successfully created unique machine learning models that can detect thyroid nodules in patients with high degrees of accuracy. The development makes the process non-invasive and enables the prediction of hormonal presence in patients. Computer topography imaging techniques cannot present ICH related information. According to experts, these capabilities make a timely diagnosis of thyroid cancers possible and feasible.
• Brain Tumor Detection and Treatment
Current technologies for detection and classification of malignant brain tumors are good enough, but with radiomics, the amounts of data that can be extracted increases substantially. Subsequently, radiomic analysis can generate insightful data which are helpful for diagnosis, evaluation, and treatments. The advanced imaging also enables practitioners to adhere to recently announced protocols which vary significantly from the standard ones. One of the significant advantages of using radiomics in brain tumor assessment is that it allows the determination of molecular characteristics which help categorize molecular subtypes.
• Diagnosis of Cancers in Breast, Lungs and Neck
Radiomics has been widely adopted by medical fraternity for the neck, lungs, and breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. Predicting the stage of cancer in cancer-afflicted patients with minimum or no invasive procedures is a significant step forward. Radiomics has shown excellent results in projecting the differences which help in classifying the stage of cancer. Even reoccurrence predictions have been benefitted with radiomic signature-based investigations. The ability of radiomics to take into consideration a higher number of factors and features by combining recorded clinical information makes it useful in early detection of breast, lungs, and neck cancers. In the case of breast cancer patients, radiomics is predicting response to therapy with high accuracy and thus optimizing treatment.
• Precision Medicine
High sensitivity and high specificity are the remarkable features of radiomics. As the medical industry adopts precision medicine, radiomics is all set to play a very crucial role. Radiomics is powerful because it applies artificial intelligence and deep learning characteristics to radiology, thus helping define tissues with much more accuracy. Every patient can undergo a radiomics-based diagnosis and come up with personalized reports. These reports can relay detailed information which enables doctors to prescribe personalized medication or treatment models. Thus, radiomics is helping extract qualitative and quantitative data which make precision medicine possible.
Reading and interpreting medical data is challenging. However, radiomics is transforming decision-making by bettering identification and characterization. One can expect the diagnosis to become faster and error-free as computerization becomes central to the process. Subsequently, patient care will also improve as doctors gain access to deeper health insights.
