Affordable cancer screening may be available to Hong Kong residents within three years, as advances in artificial intelligence (AI) make the early detection of malignant tumours easier and faster, according to the creator of a pioneering prenatal test for Down syndrome.
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AI helps researchers recognise patterns in the gene fragments they find in blood plasma, sparking a revolution in the field of epigenetics, or the study of non-mutation behavioural effects on genes, said Professor Dennis Lo Yuk-ming.
The AI-powered method enables researchers to decipher epigenetic signals from DNA samples without the damaging effects of the chemical treatment that destroys 90 per cent of the genetic material, he said.
“My team members and I were asking: is it possible to use some of the AI methods developed for facial recognition [to help us] see things we cannot see?” Lo said during a January 7 interview with the Post. “As it turned out, it is.”
Lo’s team at the Centre for Novostics at the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park developed an in-house AI system based on the Convolutional Neural Network, a deep learning model that was designed mainly for image recognition. With advances in generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, the company also incorporated the transformer neural network architecture into the system, he said.
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