- Cancer causes millions of deaths in India particularly oral cancer in males and breast cancer in females.
- HCG cancer hospital in Bangalore has started an innovative treatment procedure for cancer integrating radiation and AI.
- This form of therapy will allow for treating tumours in 15-minute procedures.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death all over the world and in our country as well. The various types of cancer ranging from breast cancer to oral cancer claim thousands of lives every year.
In the year 2020 alone there were about 3.7 million people who were affected by cancer. An average of 8.5 lakh people get added to this ever-growing list. Amongst the women of our country, one woman dies of breast cancer every 8 minutes.
These statistics go on to show how deeply our country is affected by this deadly disease.
But on the positive side, there have been some groundbreaking discoveries in our fight against cancer.
This includes the discovery of novel anticancer drugs as well as modest forms of radiation therapy. And now we have been able to include Artificial Intelligence in our pursuit to end this debilitating disease as well.
AI against Cancer: Varian Ethos
Radiation treatment is the go-to therapy and measure in our fight against cancer. This form of treatment using radiation waves can now be more accurate and precise than before.
This new therapy will be based on the position of the tumour and the anatomy of the patient’s body. This will lead to more personalisation of the radiation therapy making it more potent and targeting as a result.
The HCG Cancer Hospital in Bengaluru is the specialized oncology centre which will have this facility that uses augmented intelligence – a convergence between AI and human touch and effort to get the best and most accurate results.
The basis of employing this adaptive therapy is the temporal and spatial variability of tumours during the course of radiation therapy. Experts have claimed that this concept is absolutely evolutionary and could take our fight against cancer to the very next level.
With this therapy, various kinds of cancer like head and neck cancer, prostate, bladder, thorax and even abdominal cancer can be treated with extreme precision and accuracy.
Advantages of AI radiation therapy
The biggest upside of this adaptive radiation therapy is the fact that it gives the doctors the ability to alter the treatment plan according to the position and anatomical requirements and changes of the patient. This gives the rare ability to plan the ore treatment and make better inroads to the path of curing the malignant tumour.
AI-enhanced image segmentation is one of the biggest advantages which is offered by this treatment therapy. This technology enables us to capture movements in both external and internal anatomy during each stage of the anatomy.
Automated dose accumulation is also applied to monitor and check the progress of the radiation and treatment. This results in increasing the personalisation of the therapy and the targeted drive also makes it more accurate. Not only this, the personalisation goes on to increase the side effects of the therapy which is a major downside of other forms of cancer treatment.
The cons
Adaptive radiation therapy will enable clinicians to give accurate and personalized therapy in as short a span as 15 minutes. However, the solution might not be quite cost-effective.
The cost which the patients will have to pay will vary somewhere from 4,50,000 to 4,75,000 in Indian currency. Furthermore, the size and position of the tumour will be the deciding factors which determine the cost of the treatment
