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Cambridge Consultants and Exact Imaging harnessing AI in the fight to detect prostate cancer
(CAMBRIDGE, UK AND TORONTO, CANADA) September 06, 2018 – Breakthrough innovation specialist Cambridge Consultants has partnered with Exact Imaging, makers of the ExactVu™ micro-ultrasound platform, as the two companies work to improve the way prostate cancer is visualized and detected. Cambridge Consultants is applying deep learning to high-resolution micro-ultrasound imaging to identify potential suspicious regions of tissue and inform urologists who may want to consider this additional data in their biopsy protocol. Early results show real promise.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in men in both the USA and the UK. There is an urgent need for improved accuracy in the detection and diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancers. The current standard-of-care ultrasound, which guides prostatic needle biopsies that help to diagnose prostate cancer, yields a 30% false negative rate as the resolution of the ultrasound systems is insufficient to differentiate suspicious regions. As such, the prostate biopsies are usually delivered in a systematic, “blind” pattern [1].
The ExactVu™ micro-ultrasound platform is a significant new imaging tool to allow urologists to harness “micro” ultrasound’s near microscopic resolution in order to visualize suspicious regions and actually target their biopsies to those regions. Operating at 29 MHz, the micro-ultrasound provides a 300% improvement in resolution over conventional ultrasound.
Cambridge Consultants aims to harness higher resolution micro-ultrasound images from the ExactVu™ platform, in combination with decades of medical technology expertise and cutting-edge machine learning techniques, to provide new information to urologists to help them to improve their targeting of prostate biopsies. In recent years Cambridge Consultants has been at the forefront of advances in machine learning and deep learning, applying this transformative technology to a wide range of industries and disciplines.
With their AI tools able to interrogate the full ultrasound data set correlated to pathology, the analysis should deliver improved accuracy and better characterization of suspicious regions. The machine learning approach being applied is faster and less computationally intensive than traditional statistical approaches and may ultimately form the backbone of a commercially-viable software application. Early results from proof of concept testing show significant promise, even with relatively limited data sets.
Shweta Gupta, Head of Urology and Women’s Health at Cambridge Consultants commented: “The need for effective management of prostate cancer is as pressing as ever. We are proud to have the opportunity to try and improve the detection pathway and excited by the opportunity to apply deep learning to this significant clinical problem.”
The current work on prostate cancer is the latest output from Cambridge Consultants’ Digital Greenhouse – a unique experimental environment where data scientists and engineers explore and develop cutting edge machine learning and deep learning techniques. Recent work has focused on applying deep learning in areas where massive datasets are unavailable – in this case data was available on hundreds of patients – aiming to ensure that deep learning is potent beyond the huge online datasets that have powered advances to date.
Notes to editors
About Exact Imaging
Exact Imaging (www.exactimaging.com) is the world’s leader in high-resolution micro-ultrasound systems enabling real-time imaging and guided biopsies in the urological market for prostate cancer. Exact Imaging’s ExactVu™ micro-ultrasound platform operates at 29 MHz and enables a whole new level of resolution with the benefits of ease of use, affordability, and being an extension of the current urological workflow. Using the Exact Imaging platform, urologists are able to visualize areas of interest in the prostate and specifically target biopsies at those areas. For the minority of cases where MRI might assist (i.e., prior negative biopsies), the FusionVu™ micro-US/MRI fusion application operates on the ExactVu micro-ultrasound platform and facilitates MRI fusion-based targeting. The ExactVu micro-ultrasound system has received regulatory approval in the European Union (CE Mark), the United States (FDA 510(k)) and Canada (Health Canada medical device license).
About Cambridge Consultants and Capgemini
About Cambridge Consultants
As the deep tech powerhouse of Capgemini, Cambridge Consultants (CC), is a global team of 800 bright, talented people. We are united by the ambition to turn brilliant ideas into technologies, products and services that have never been seen before. And which will transform business, society and the planet. Deep tech is a mindset; a bold strategy that harnesses radical science and engineering to achieve things no-one else can. It enables our clients to gain unassailable commercial advantage from defendable technology that they own. We are trusted by some of the world’s biggest brands and most ambitious start-ups to realise their critical technology-based aspirations – and we’ve been doing it for 60 years. Cambridge Consultants is part of Capgemini Invent.
About Capgemini
Capgemini is a global business and technology transformation partner, helping organisations to accelerate their dual transition to a digital and sustainable world, while creating tangible impact for enterprises and society. It is a responsible and diverse group of 340,000 team members in more than 50 countries. With its strong over 55-year heritage, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to unlock the value of technology to address the entire breadth of their business needs. It delivers end-to-end services and solutions leveraging strengths from strategy and design to engineering, all fueled by its market leading capabilities in AI, cloud and data, combined with its deep industry expertise and partner ecosystem. The Group reported 2023 global revenues of €22.5 billion
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