In partnership with NHS hospitals, Lucinda Medical developed PiTM – Prostate Intelligence™ – the leading AI-based software to find prostate cancer on MRI.
PiTM is CE certified to support the analysis of MRI for prostate cancer diagnosis and is now entering clinical use across the UK and Europe. PiTM is an AI-algorithm developed using a combination of image processing, deep learning and machine learning methods. It has been trained and validated on NHS patient data to accurately detect clinically significant prostate cancer on MRI.
The technology has been developed in collaboration with radiologists, urologists and patients to support the prostate cancer diagnostic pathway by:
- Find prostate cancer accurately and as early as possible, providing a risk score to aid radiologists with cancer detection and decision-making
- Acting as a safety net or second-reader to help ensure significant cancers are not missed on MRI, while also reducing unnecessary biopsies
- Identify, prioritise and accelerate high-risk men for urgent clinical review through workflow prioritisation and triage
- Provide information that can help clinicians minimise unnecessary further and harmful investigations such as prostate biopsy
- Supporting radiologists through automating time-consuming tasks such as prostate segmentation
- Save hospitals money: Cost-effectiveness analysis indicates a cost saving of £139 per patient over a lifetime, through increased accuracy and biopsy avoidance
The software operates fully automatically, integrating with radiologists’ workflows and meeting NHS requirements without requiring switching to a separate user interface or software package. It has been designed and shown to work within existing NHS IT infrastructure.
Through deploying the technology into the NHS we aim to support clinicians to improve effectiveness of care with reduced variation, improved patient outcomes and cost-savings to the NHS.