Automation May May Make Virtual Colonoscopy More Effective
The best tool that is out there for screening to detect colon cancer is the virtual colonoscopy. This is the easiest procedure available in terms of the comfort of the patient. More importantly, the virtual colonoscopy is capable of not only detecting potentially-harmful polyps in the colon but also of assessing the size and therefore the risk level of those polyps.
Currently the results of the virtual colonoscopy are ready by humans, doctors who take a look at the information provided in the screening and who determine what the risk level is of the polyps based on their size. This is obviously a time-consuming and specialized job which makes it inefficient and costly to the patient.
What doctors hope is that there may be a way to actually automatize the process of reading the screening results so that a computer can read the scans and assess the polyps. Recent testing shows that attempts to do this have been successful and that patients who have screening read this way are just as likely to get accurate results as are patients whose scans are manually read.
Learn more about the details of the study related to this topic from
this report.
Question of the Day: What should be done to make the virtual colonoscopy more efficient while still maintaining the accuracy of the results?photo link
