DermEngine Blog

AI's Place In Dermatology

Written by The DermEngine Team | Jun 8, 2018 9:10:04 PM

If you search for "Artificial Intelligence in Dermatology" news, you will likely be bombarded with articles asking questions such as "Will AI Replace Doctors?" or making broad statements such as "See Why AI Is The Next Big Thing In Dermatology". But what does this all mean? How will AI actually become integrated into the dermoscopy industry, and what does it mean for healthcare professionals?

What Are Realistic Applications For Intelligent Dermatology Software?
Although it has been confirmed that artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are becoming increasingly smart to the point that they are able to accurately identify skin cancers such as melanoma, this prompts the question of exactly what applications artificial intelligence in dermatology holds.


A primary suggestion voiced by dermatologists and machine learning experts alike is that artificial intelligence (AI) will be used to support doctors with their clinical decisions. For example, intelligent dermatology software such as DermEngine are taking advantage of complex Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to create advanced content-based image retrieval algorithms.

Put simply, the company has designed a software that specializes in recognizing the visual features in an image and retrieving ones that look similar. 
This means that if a dermatologist is submits a dermoscopic image into the software's Visual Search, the feature will retrieve visually similar images from a library of tens of thousands of pre-labelled pathology images. Additionally, the tool provides valuable statistics about the risk of malignancy and top diagnosis of the top visually similar images.

The Impact Of Intelligent Clinical Decision Support Tools
Already recognized by dermatologists and the media, intelligent dermoscopy tools such as Visual Search will revolutionize the way dermatologists perform their clinical decisions. The tool allows dermatologists to receive deeper clinical insights through evidence-based decisions for optimized care outcomes, thus proving highly valuable as an educational resource. From the emerging trends in digital healthcare, the artificial intelligence in healthcare revolution is rooted in the following changes:

  • Shift from treatment to prediction and prevention
  • Development of intelligent technologies that utilize big data
  • Introduction of smart interoperable medical software
  • Evolution towards personalized medicine based on intrinsic data insights.


Conclusion

The dermatoscope industry is already experiencing the impact of machine learning on the dermatology industry. Although artificial intelligence in dermatology has made leaps and bounds in recent years with technologies like DermEngine's Visual Search, experts agree it isn't here to replace doctors- rather support them in their clinical decisions for enhanced patient outcomes and optimized care.

-The MetaOptima Team

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