Features

There are the believers in augmented medicine, with physicians and machines working hand in hand and improving care and patient outcomes. And there are the stalwarts who see machines taking over the tasks of mankind. Period.

Population health is absolutely something we want to target. To do that, we are using our archive of images that includes radiology, cardiovascular, interoperative and dermatology. For example, we’re looking at body composition—the amount of muscle, visceral fat and superficial fat. And common sense makes sense. Body composition correlates with how well patients do. In some cases, abdominal fat can even be an early biomarker of some cancers, like pancreatic cancer.

When it comes to teaching new dogs new tricks, radiology training programs need to be thinking about updating their curricula and preparing for both the short- and the long-term effects of AI and machine learning, according to “Toward Augmented Radiologists,” a new commentary published online in March in Academic Radiology.

Ever the visionary, Paul Chang sees AI as an asset to radiologists. As he sees it, “AI and deep learning doesn’t replace us. It frees us to do more valuable work.” The vice chair of radiology informatics at University of Chicago Medicine takes a quick look through the crystal ball at the four stand-out challenges facing radiology with the rise of AI.