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“OSAIRIS” is saving many hours of doctors’ time in preparing scans and helping to cut the time patients have to wait between referral for radiotherapy and starting treatment.

Working alongside this AI technology, specialists can plan for radiotherapy treatments approximately two and half times faster than if they were working alone, ensuring more patients can get treatment sooner and improving the likelihood of cure.

The technology is currently being used at Addenbrooke��ѻ��ý for prostate and head and neck cancers, but has the potential to work for many other types of cancer, benefitting patients across the ��ѻ��ý.

Dr Raj Jena, oncologist at ��ѻ��ý ��ѻ��ý Foundation Trust, led the research for the ��ѻ��ý and University of Cambridge.

How OSAIRIS saves time

OSAIRIS works by significantly cutting the amount of time a doctor needs to spend drawing around healthy organs on scans before radiotherapy.

Outlining the organs, known as ‘segmentation’, is critical in order to protect the healthy tissue around the cancer from radiation.

It can take a doctor between 20 minutes and three hours to perform this task, per patient. This complex but routine task is ideally suited to AI with the oncologist in control, checking every scan after OSAIRIS has done the segmentation.

Dr Raj Jena said:

“OSAIRIS does much of the work in the background so that when the doctor sits down to start planning treatment, most of the heavy lifting is done.

"It is the first cloud-based AI technology to be developed and deployed within the ��ѻ��ý."

“We’ve already started to work on a model that works in the chest, so that will work for lung cancer and breast cancer particularly.

“And also, from my perspective as a neuro-oncologist, I’m interested that we’re building the brain model as well so that we’ve got something that works for brain tumours as well.”

Working with Microsoft

Dr Raj Jena's research includes long-term collaborations with Microsoft Research on an AI research project known as Project InnerEye to develop machine learning techniques to support the global medical imaging community.

To broaden access to research in this field, Microsoft Research made available Project InnerEye toolkits as open-source software.

With a £500,000 grant from the ��ѻ��ý AI Lab, Dr Jena��ѻ��ý team created a new AI tool, OSAIRIS, using open-source software from Project InnerEye and data from patients who had previously been treated in the hospital and agreed to contribute to the research.

Aditya Nori, General Manager of Healthcare for Microsoft Research, said:

“By combining the power of AI with the world-class clinical expertise of the ��ѻ��ý, we have an amazing opportunity for revolutionising healthcare together, while preserving the human element that is the essence of high-quality and safe care.”

Safety

Rigorous tests and risk assessments have been carried out to ensure OSAIRIS is safe and can be used in the day-to-day care of radiotherapy patients across the ��ѻ��ý.

In masked tests, known as ‘Turing tests’, doctors were unable to tell the difference between the work of OSAIRIS and the work of a doctor colleague.

Amy Edwards is a clinical engineer at CUH and was involved in the testing. She said:

"Myself and the team essentially sit together and think of all the risks with this device, anything that could go wrong, any way in which it could be used incorrectly.

"And then we have to come up with some solutions to those risks and we have to make sure the device is safe to be used in all patients, no matter what type of patient we're looking at."

Dr Raj Jena added:

"18 months of rigorous testing will enable us to share this technology safely across the ��ѻ��ý for patient benefit.”

Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said:

“Cutting edge technology can help us reduce waiting times for cancer patients, free up time for staff so they can focus on patient care, and ultimately save lives – and artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important role.

“Backed by £500,000 in government funding, the team at Addenbrooke��ѻ��ý Hospital are utilising the innovative OSAIRIS tool to speed up radiotherapy scans at more than twice the normal rate - reducing the time it takes to start potentially life-saving treatment.

“It will also help ease the pressure on the ��ѻ��ý and cut waiting lists, one of the government��ѻ��ý five priorities.

“In the year the ��ѻ��ý turns 75 we are investing in its future and last week announced a new £21 million fund for Trusts to deploy AI tools in a safe and controlled way to speed up the diagnosis and treatment for a range of conditions.”

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, ��ѻ��ý national medical director said:

"Ever since the ��ѻ��ý was founded 75 years ago, it has been at the forefront of testing new technologies that could improve patient care and save lives – the ��ѻ��ý continues to take the lead in new AI technologies, like this one, to ensure our patients are among the first in the world to benefit."