What if a computer could read a patient's medical notes and help doctors determine important information for their treatments?
At MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, researchers led by Jihad Obeid, M.D., and Mario Fugal, Ph.D., are using an advanced form of artificial intelligence (AI) to do just that – unlocking critical details buried in medical records to tailor treatments for cancer that affect the brain. Their high-accuracy model could transform how doctors classify and treat metastatic tumors, offering faster answers and more personalized care without adding to doctors' workloads.
In the new study, published in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, the researchers used a form of AI called natural language processing (NLP) to solve a frustrating problem: how to efficiently communicate specifics of the patient's diagnosis between doctors from different specialties if the patient is scheduled for radiation for brain tumors.
Tracing cancer's origins
Most cancers in the brain, known as brain metastases, did not start there. Rather, those cancers started elsewhere in the body, such as the lung, breast, skin, kidney or digestive tract, and then traveled to the brain.
Knowing where brain metastases originated is a critical piece in the clinical puzzle. This is especially true for patients receiving a specialized treatment called stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), which delivers a high dose of targeted radiation in a single session. While highly effective, SRS does come with risks. These include side effects from too much radiation and potential damage to healthy, noncancerous tissue nearby.
But these risks can be reduced or even avoided if patients' treatments are tailored to their original cancer types because different cancers respond differently to radiation. For example, lung cancers are very sensitive to radiation and can be treated with lower doses. In contrast, kidney cancer tends to resist radiation and requires more prolonged treatment.
"The brain is such a sensitive organ that we want to be as precise as possible with the radiation dose," Fugal said. "But first, we need to know what exactly we're treating and then develop a specific treatment plan based on that information."
