Colorectal cancer is the third most-common cancer
worldwide, with almost 2 million new cases detected in 2020,
according to World
Cancer Research.
While diagnosing colon-related
cancers is a relatively straightforward procedure – most
adults will undertake a colonoscopy by the time they’re 60
– spotting abnormalities along all 6 feet of the large
intestine is still a labour-intensive process. Backed by
years of experience, doctors performing the procedure rely
on a steady hand, sharp eyesight and unwavering attention to
detail.
But you’re still dealing with humans – and
that means errors. Detection rates for adenomas, a type of
growth along the colon wall, tend to decrease through the
course of the day. That’s largely due to human-related
causes, according to a 2018
study, as operators rush procedures or because of plain
human fatigue.
And the risk of a miss is alarming in
even a small percentage of cases when you consider as many
as 15 million colonoscopies are performed in the U.S. each
year, according
to CNN.
Help is here, thanks to a
collaboration between ASUS and Intel: An AI-boosted solution
spots adenomas in mere milliseconds, often before the human
eye can.
Launched in November, the
ASUS
EndoAim AI Endoscopy System is about as large as the
palm of your hand. It sits unobtrusively in a colonoscopy
room, blending into the background and clutter of other,
larger medical equipment. It feeds video data from the
colonoscopy camera through an ASUS mini PC running on an 11th
Gen Intel® Core™ processor (code-named Tiger Lake)
and outputs the result at a smooth 60 frames per second
(most competing solutions today can only output at half that
rate).
The solution tags suspected polyps and other
abnormalities on the screen by bracketing them in green, and
immediately classifies the polyps, saving medical staff the
guesswork. And it doesn’t just tag a single polyp at a
time. ASUS claims that in clinical trials, EndoAim can
bracket up to 50 polyps in real-time.
Results aren’t
confined to clinical trials.
Late last year, a Taiwan
doctor using an early version of EndoAim explained
how it helped him detect eight polyps simultaneously
during a routine colonoscopy. In early March 2023, another
doctor thanked EndoAim for helping
him locate a 0.3-centimeter adenoma hidden in the
deepest part of a patient’s large intestine.
Today,
ASUS EndoAim is used at five medical facilities in Taiwan,
including the Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, the
National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Hospital, Dianthus
Medical Group, Dr. LEE Clinic and Ansn Clinic.
Its
success isn’t due just to smart silicon in a compact
case.
Intel engineers helped ASUS fine-tune their AI
solutions to detect the tiniest polyp on a wide array of
Intel open source software, including OpenVINO™
toolkit. The ability to seamlessly and quickly write
code to accelerate the system’s development and bring it
to market in less than two years “played a crucial role in
bringing our vision to life,” said April Yang, project
manager, EndoAim, ASUS.
“Our goal is to showcase the
effectiveness of EndoAim in Taiwan and emphasise how AI can
truly assist physicians. Just like advanced
driver-assistance systems in cars, AI does not replace the
physicians but serves as a reliable backup, enabling
high-quality inspections,” Yang explained, adding that
EndoAim differentiates itself from other AI-boosted
solutions by offering real-time polyp detection with up to
95% sensitivity and the ability to classify polyps with up
to 95% AUC (a type of performance measurement in machine
learning models).
Competing solutions require
expensive add-on scopes to enable real-time polyp detection,
said Yang. EndoAim doesn’t require any additional hardware
beyond plugging the Mini PC into the scope’s
camera.
“Ultimately, we aim to help doctors increase
the polyp detection rate during scope-related procedures and
to help them make accurate evaluations that avoid
unnecessary tissue biopsies.”
Intel-Backed Mini
PC
Size does matter, especially in tiny hospital
procedure rooms.
When ASUS engineers began developing
this solution in 2021 with advanced AI computing technology
integrated into a large tower-based PC chassis, they quickly
realised space was a huge constraint.
Intel suggested
the 11th Gen CPU family. The Intel CPUs feature Intel®
Iris® Xe Graphics tech that provides discrete-level
integrated graphics.
“With OpenVINO, ASUS found out
that they were able to achieve 60 frames per second
detection rate within a compact Intel CPU. That also means
lower cost, and they were able to enable a fanless design as
well as a smaller footprint, which makes the portability
possible,” explained Tasha Chuang, director of the ASUS
global account team, Intel Taiwan.
‘This is Just
the Beginning’
Intel and ASUS are exploring new
opportunities to further enhance EndoAim by boosting its
display output and computing prowess, and to expand the
technology into other medical areas.
“We need more
computing power and are currently testing Intel’s 13th Gen
processor family now,” said Yang, explaining how ASUS is
looking to evolve future solutions with higher 4K
resolutions.
“We’re also exploring the ability to
add more functionality that doctors and medical staff will
find useful, and we look forward to collaborating with Intel
in this area. This is just the
beginning.”
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