Futurity: AI Can Diagnose 10 Types of Dementia
Excerpt from Futurity | By: Boston University | July 11, 2024 | Photo courtesy of Getty Images
Ten million new cases of dementia are diagnosed each year but the presence of different dementia forms and overlapping symptoms can complicate diagnosis and delivery of effective treatments
The researchers created a multimodal Machine Learning (ML) framework that accurately identifies specific pathologies causing dementia using commonly collected clinical data, such as demographic information, patient- and family-level medical history, medication use, neurological and neuropsychological exam scores, and neuroimaging data such as MRI scans.
The findings appear in Nature Medicine.
“Our generative AI tool enables differential dementia diagnosis using routinely collected clinical data, showing its potential as a scalable diagnostic tool for AD and related dementias,” says corresponding author Vijaya B. Kolachalama, associate professor of medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.
“The ability to generate diagnosis with routine clinical data is becoming increasingly important given the significant challenges in accessing gold-standard testing, not only in remote and economically developing regions and in urban health care centers,” adds Kolachalama who also is an associate professor of computer science, affiliate faculty of Hariri Institute for Computing, and a founding member of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University.