The R. Howard Webster Foundation is pleased to be supporting an important research chair with a 5-year grant, helping Dr. Chris McIntosh, a Scientist at the University Health Network in Toronto, to harness the full potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize medical imaging at The Princess Margaret.
While most medical AI research must go down a long, arduous road before it can be implemented in treatment centres, the Chair in Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence has already helped break new ground and bring multiple projects to clinic, resulting in improved outcomes for cancer patients.
Dr. McIntosh and his team have developed an AI platform that uses machine learning (ML) to rapidly create effective radiation therapy (RT) plans and applied AI contouring to provide diagnoses for lung cancer patients in real-time. Both innovations allow clinicians to act faster and provide more accurate diagnoses.
The Princess Margaret’s unique environment for staging multi-clinical collaborations helps accelerate the translation of Dr. McIntosh’s work in AI and ML to its application in a care setting, often with potential for rapid expansion to patients to different cancer areas and other centres around the world.
Shortly after the deployment of the AI platform for RT planning for prostate patients, marking UHN’s first-ever clinical deployment of AI, the team adapted the system for RT planning for pediatric patients with brain tumours. The system has been externally licensed and deployed at other cancer centres in Canada, the US and Europe.
We are excited about the possibilities of this research and thrilled to help The Princess Margaret push the boundaries of AI technology and improve outcomes for cancer patients worldwide.
