New AI tool offers precision pathology for cancer and beyond

The tool, called iStar (Inferring Super-Resolution Tissue Architecture), was developed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The imaging technique provides detailed views of individual cells, as well as the full spectrum of how people’s genes operate, which researchers said could allow doctors and researchers to see cancer cells that might otherwise have been ‘virtually invisible’.

In addition, the tool can be used to determine whether safe margins were achieved through cancer surgeries and automatically provide annotation for microscopic images, paving the way for molecular disease diagnosis at that level.

In a statement, Mingyao Li, PhD, professor of Biostatistics and Digital Pathology and co-lead of the study, said iStar has the ability to automatically detect critical anti-tumour immune formations called ‘tertiary lymphoid structures,’ whose presence correlates with a patient’s likely survival and favourable response to immunotherapy.

Immunotherapy currently requires high precision in patient selection, and Li said that iStar could be a powerful aid for determining which patients would benefit most from the treatment.