AI-based technique may detect prostate cancer from urine

The research team, including Kwan Hyi Lee from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), developed this technique by introducing a smart AI analysis method to an electrical signal-based ultra-sensitive biosensor.

"This research developed a smart biosensor that can rapidly diagnose prostate cancer with almost 100 per cent accuracy only through a urine test, and it can be further utilized in the precise diagnoses of other cancers using a urine test," said Lee.

Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men. Patients are determined to have prostate cancer primarily based on Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA), a cancer factor in blood.

However, as diagnostic accuracy is as low as 30 per cent, a considerable number of patients undergo additional invasive biopsy and thus suffer from resultant side effects, such as bleeding and pain, the researchers said.

For the study, published in the journal ACS Nano, the team developed an ultra-sensitive semiconductor sensor system capable of simultaneously measuring trace amounts of selected four cancer factors in urine for diagnosing prostate cancer.

They trained AI by using the correlation between the four cancer factors, which were obtained from the developed sensor.

The trained AI algorithm was then used to identify those with prostate cancer by analyzing complex patterns of the detected signals.

The diagnosis of prostate cancer by utilizing the AI analysis successfully detected 76 urinary samples with almost 100 per cent accuracy.