The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) https://www.diu.mil within the Department of Defense (DOD) https://www.defense.gov is scaling commercial technology across the agency. The goal is to bring together commercially available Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and the Defense Department’s archived medical data to teach computers how to better identify cancers and other medical irregularities. The new tools will be able to help medical professionals more accurately and more quickly identify medical issues in patients.
The new DIU project called Predictive Health, supports DOD’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center’s (JAIC) https://dodcio.defense.gov/about-DOD-CIO/organization/JAIC health initiative which is working with the Defense Health Agency (DHA) https://www.health.mil and military services to find AI solutions aimed at transforming military healthcare. JAIC is providing funding for the project and technical expertise.
An important part of the Predictive Health project will involve training AI to look at de-identified DOD medical imagery and then teach AI to identify cancers. To do this, AI can be used along with the Augmented Reality Microscope (ARM) complete with a small camera and projector which hopefully will enable the computer to help medical professionals better identify cancer cells.
Using AI to look for cancer cells first requires researchers to teach AI what cancer looks like. This requires access to a large set of training data. The Predictive Health project will require medical imagery produced by CT scans, MRIs, X-rays, and slide imagery made from biopsies. If the researchers know ahead of time that the imagery depicts an illness such as cancer, the hope is to have the ability to train AI to identify cancer.
According to Dr. Niels Olson, DIU, Chief Medical Officer and Originator of the Predictive Health project, “The Department of Defense (DOD) has the medical imagery needed for the project since DOD works with a diverse set of available data, and unlike some of the other large systems, has a pretty good representation of the U.S population.”
Go to https://diu.mil/work-with-us/commercial for more information on DIU.