GNN has repeatedly reported how artificial intelligence is being used to detect signs of cancer.
Now, a team of high school students uses AI to help their community fight one of the more deadly forms: mouth cancer.
Using a photo taken on a smartphone, the oral scan application detects the signs of mouth cancer at a success rate of 82%. If AI thinks that this has found evidence of a tumor, it can diagnose the scene with an even better success rate and 87%.
Not bad for a bunch of adolescents, and even if 82% is lower than most medical ethicians believe they are the threshold to outsource tumor identification to a machine, is much better than the rate of 0%, what many in the original state of the team’s arkansas.
52,000 Americans receive a diagnosis of mouth cancer each year, and more than 12,000 died accordingly, according to their research. Early detection of oral cancer can increase survival rates by 40%, but these cancers are detected at the start of 30% of cases.
In dental deserts, these figures are even worse. In Arkansas, for example, 90% of the population did not visit a dentist last year, and according to a dental surgeon with whom the team spoke, whole counties of Arkansas do not even have a dentist to visit.
“We have learned that current diagnostic methods are expensive, intrusive and often inaccurate, which makes early detection rare,” said Veera Unnam, one of the team members, from Bentonville West High School.
Their response is the oral scan, a free application in which each diagnosis will only cost 50 cents and will provide an answer in just 15 seconds.
The team designed the application to be usable in all Apple and Android iOS countries, and made sure that it was easy and intuitive to use, showing their commitment not only to Arkansas, but the world in general.
It finds cancer:
Recently, Unnam and his two colleagues entered Oral Scan in the 15th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition, empowering students from public schools (6th to 12th year) to generate a positive change in their communities by applying STEM know-how to solve real and pressing problems.
Each finalist school receives $ 50,000 in Samsung technology and supplies and will compete in the live resolution event for tomorrow in Washington, DC, on April 28. Three national winners will each win $ 100,000 as a price, and one will be appointed winner of community choice.
Celebrating the 15th year of Solve for tomorrow, Samsung has awarded more than 27 million dollars in resources to nearly 4,000 public schools in the United States to date, and the oral scan team hopes that it will be among the recent winners. However, before the winner’s announcement, Oral Scan already made the front page of the national newspapers, and the team was invited to speak during medical conferences to present their invention.
Watch the students’ video field below …
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