Artificial Intelligence Could Revolutionize Kidney Disease Diagnosis

The use of technology to identify potential health concerns is an exciting area of the medical field which is only destined to enjoy wider attention in years to come. One such ground-breaking new use of technology, in the form of AI or Artificial Intelligence, is currently being utilized by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine as published in Kidney International Reports, who are using their new development of an artificial intelligence computer model to determine the progression of kidney disease within the body, as well as the remaining life of the kidneys with biopsy imaging.
The need for this technology is echoed by study co-author Vijaya B. Kolachalama’s quote,”While the trained eyes of expert pathologists can gauge the severity of disease and detect nuances of kidney damage with remarkable accuracy, such expertise is not available in all locations, especially at a global level.” A universally-available, expert eyed AI would be able to identify kidney disease more quickly, help practitioners diagnose more accurately and give patients a fuller, more thorough picture of what their overall kidney health looks like.

The system makes use of Convolutional Neural Networks to analyze radiology images and recognize patterns in levels of kidney disease progression. Researchers found that this system was actually able to outperform other models, even those created by nephropathologists. If technology like this were to become more widely available, the research team anticipates greater point-of-care accuracy in classifying kidney disease early on, which could revolutionize renal practice as we know it.