This AI Could Help Wipe Out Colon Cancer

Medtronic’s GI Genius, recently cleared by the FDA, will help doctors identify precancerous polyps.

MICHAEL WALLACE HAS performed hundreds of colonoscopies in his 20 years as a gastroenterologist. He thinks he’s pretty good at recognizing the growths, or polyps, that can spring up along the ridges of the colon and potentially turn into cancer. But he isn’t always perfect. Sometimes the polyps are flat and hard to see. Other times, doctors just miss them. “We’re all humans,” says Wallace, who works at the Mayo Clinic. After a morning of back-to-back procedures that require attention to minute details, he says, “we get tired.” 

Colonoscopies, if unpleasant, are highly effective at sussing out pre-cancerous polyps and preventing colon cancer. But the effectiveness of the procedure rests heavily on the abilities of the physician performing it. Now, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a new tool that promises to help doctors recognize precancerous growths during a colonoscopy: an artificial intelligencesystem made by Medtronic. Doctors say that alongside other measures, the tool could help improve diagnoses. “We really have the opportunity to completely wipe out colon cancer in anybody who gets screened,” says Wallace, who consulted with Medtronic on the project.

The Medtronic system, called GI Genius, has seen the inside of more colons than most doctors. Medtronic and partner Cosmo Pharmaceuticals trained the algorithm to recognize polyps by reviewing more than 13 million videos of colonoscopies conducted in Europe and the US that Cosmo had collected while running drug trials. To “teach” the AI to distinguish potentially dangerous growths, the images were labeled by gastroenterologists as either normal or unhealthy tissue. Then the AI was tested on progressively harder-to-recognize polyps, starting with colonoscopies that were performed under perfect conditions and moving to more difficult challenges, like distinguishing a polyp that was very small, only in range of the camera briefly, or hidden in a dark spot.

The system, which can be added to the scopes that doctors already use to perform a colonoscopy, follows along as the doctor probes the colon, highlighting potential polyps with a green box. GI Genius was approved in Europe in October 2019 and is the first AI cleared by the FDA for helping detect colorectal polyps. “It found things that even I missed,” says Wallace, who co-authored the first validation study of GI Genius. “It’s an impressive system.”

“This is a tool to help us do what we already do better.” 

Mark Pochapin, a gastroenterologist at NYU Langone who was not involved in creating GI Genius, says it makes sense that AI would be good at recognizing polyps. “There is less diversity when you’re looking at polyps,” says Pochapin. The millions of colonoscopy videos provide plenty of data to make the algorithm comprehensive. That should shield the system from concerns about bias in other health care algorithms. “There are only so many varieties of polyps,” he says.

Medtronic sees GI Genius, and other AI tools, as a cornerstone of its future business, says Giovanni Di Napoli, president of Medtronic’s GI business. To that end, the company invested lots of time and resources into winning approval from the FDA for this device. “It took almost a year for us to get FDA approval,” says Di Napoli. “It’s not easy.”

Medtronic sought FDA clearance under what the agency calls its de novo pathway, which requires applicants to provide information about the safety and effectiveness of new devices including clinical data. This is a lengthier and more involved application that some other AI medical devices have avoided. Most AI and machine learning medical devices go on the market using a streamlined FDA application known as the 510(k) pathway, which only requires them to prove their devices are similar to other tools already in use and typically takes about six months. According to a study published in The Lancet,of the 222 AI devices that went on the market in the US between 2015 and 2020, 92 percent did so through the 510(k).

Technically, the FDA won’t “approve” GI Genius. The agency reserves that term for devices that go through a third, even more rigorous process.

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Medtronic supplied the FDA with data from clinical trials in the US and in Europe that show GI Genius is safe and that it rarely misidentifies healthy colon as a polyp. But while GI Genius could help ensure doctors are as thorough on their last colonoscopy of the day as they are on their first, Pochapin is skeptical that AI will be a game changer. “This is a tool to help us do what we already do better,” says Pochapin. “I don’t think we need it but I do think it will be nice to have.”

Colorectal cancer is the third-most-common cancer in the US but it should be preventable. If doctors are able to find those pre-cancerous growths early, they can be removed before they become a problem. “It should be a reasonable expectation, if you go through the trouble of getting a colonoscopy every five or 10 years, you shouldn’t you shouldn’t get colon cancer,” says Wallace. But that depends on the quality of the procedure.

GI Genius is the latest in a series of tools that can improve colonoscopies. In 2012, the FDA cleared the Endocuff, a cap with finger-like extensions that attaches to the end of the scope and gently pulls back the folds of the colon. Over the last several years, doctors have also studied the effectiveness of having patients swallow a pill containing a blue dye that makes it easier to see the polyps. There are also some basic human practices that can also help doctors be more thorough: making sure they spend enough time on each exam and having the nurse observe can improve outcomes too.

Pochapin says he is happy there are tools like AI that can help alert doctors. But he says no intervention is enough to make up for a subpar colonoscopy. “This technology should help us be better but not a substitute for the highest quality exam that we can give,” he says. “I don’t think it’s the revolution but it’s the beginning of AI helping us.”

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I never liked cats. I’m definitely a dog person. However, I came across the video below on the Internet and fell in love with this darling feline.

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Orchids At Night

Photos by Eliot Hess

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Eat, Eat, Eat! All we do is Eat!

If you watch the news— you know there are people who are making millions buying and selling NFT artwork, sport clips and more.

It stands for “non-fungible token.”

So what is an NFT?

AND should you be investing in an NFT?

Is NFT artwork the next Bitcoin?

In just 30 minutes you can learn all that you need do know.

Lois Whitman Hess and Steve Greenberg talk with an expert in the art world about NFTs on their zoom podcast, “Lying on the Beach on Camera.”

Dan Mikesell is President of Blackdove, a digital art gallery and delivery platform to residential and corporate clients. He is also co-founder of the Miami based art residency program called Fountainhead which over the past 13-years has hosted 430-artists from 45-countries for its month-long artists-in-residency program.

Click here

Don’t look at the answers yet, until the end.

The answers are printed below, (after the questions) but don’t cheat! answer them first…

01.After the Lone Ranger saved the day and rode off into the sunset, the grateful citizens would ask,”Who was that masked man?”Invariably, someone would answer, “I don’t know, but he left this behind.” What did he leave behind? A ______ ______.

02.When the Beatles first came to the U.S. In early 1964, we all watched them on The __ ________ Show.

03.”Get your kicks, __ _____ __!”

04. The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to _______ ___ _______.’

05.’In the jungle, the mighty jungle, ___ ____ ______ _______.’

06.After the Twist, The Mashed Potato, and the Watusi, we ‘danced’ under a stick that was lowered as low as we could go in a dance called the ‘_____.’

07.Nestle’s makes the very best… _________.’

08.Satchmo was America ‘s ‘Ambassador of Goodwill.’ Our parents shared this great jazz trumpet player with us. His name was ____ _________.

09.What takes a licking and keeps on ticking? ___ _____ _____.

10.Red Skeleton’s hobo character was named ______ ___ __________ and Red always ended his television show by saying, ‘Good Night, and ‘___ ____ ‘

11.Some Americans who protested the Vietnam War did so by burning their _____ _____.

12.The cute little car with the engine in the back and the trunk in the front was called the VW. What other names did it go by? ______ or ___.

13.In 1971, singer Don MacLean sang a song about, ‘the day the music died.’ This was a tribute to _____ _____.

14.We can remember the first satellite placed into orbit. The Russians did it. It was called _______.

15.One of the big fads of the late 50’s and 60’s was a large plastic ring that we twirled around our waist. It was called the _____-____.

16.Remember LS/MFT _____ ______ /_____ ____ _______.

17.Hey Kids! What time is it? It’s _____ _____ ____!

18.Who knows what secrets lie in the hearts of men? Only The ______ Knows!

19. There was a song that came out in the 60’s that was “a grave yard smash”. It’s name was the _______ ____!

20.Alka Seltzer used a “boy with a tablet on his head” as it’s Logo/Representative. What was the boy’s name was ______.

ANSWERS:

01.The Lone Ranger left behind… A silver bullet

02.The Ed Sullivan Show

03.On Route 66

O4.To protect the innocent

05.The Lion Sleeps Tonight

06.The limbo

07.Chocolate

08.Louis Armstrong

09.The Timex Watch

10.Freddy, The Freeloader and ‘Good Night and God Bless.’

11.Draft Cards (Bras were also burned. Not flags, as some have guessed)

12.Beetleor Bug

13.Buddy Holly

14.Sputnik

15.Hoola-hoop

16.Lucky Strike/Means Fine Tobacco

17.Howdy Doody Time

18.Shadow

19.Monster Mash

20.Speedy

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Thank you Michael Sommer of Park City, Utah

More people live in New York City than in 40 of the 50 states.

The word “Pennsylvania” is misspelled on the Liberty Bell.

There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South Americain one foot of liquid.

There’s a town in Washington with treetop bridges made specifically to help squirrels cross the street

In 1872, Russia sold Alaska to the Unites States for about 2 cents per acre.

It would take you more than 400 years to spend a night in all of Las Vegas’s hotel rooms.

Western Michigan is home to a giant lavender labyrinth so big you can see it on Google Earth.

There’s an island full of wild monkeys off the coast of South Carolina calledMorgan Island, and it’s not open to humans.

There’s enough concrete in the Hoover Dam to build a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York City.

Arizona and Hawaii are now the only states that don’t observe daylight savings time.

Boston has the worst drivers out of the nation’s 200 largest cities. Kansas City has the best drivers.

Kansas produces enough wheat each year to feed everyone in the world for about two weeks.

Oregon’s Crater Lake is deep enough to cover six Statues of Liberty stacked on top of each other.

The Empire State building has its own zip code.

The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office has its own quirky gift shop called Skeletons in the Closet.

The Library of Congress contains approximately 838 miles of bookshelves—long enough to stretch from Houston to Chicago.

At 46 letters, Massachusetts’s Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg has the longest place name in the U.S. (even though it’s based on a joke).

In 1922, a man built a house and all his furniture entirely out of 100,000 newspapers. The structure still stands today in Rockport, Massachusetts.

The entire Denver International Airport is twice the size of Manhattan.

In 1893, an amendment was proposed to rename the country to the “United States of Earth.”

A highway in Lancaster, California plays the “William Tell Overture” as you drive over it, thanks to some well-placed grooves in the road.

The total length of Idaho’s rivers could stretch across the United States about 40 times.

The town of Centralia, Pennsylvania has been on fire for 55 years.

The one-woman town of Monowi, Nebraska is the only officially incorporated municipality with a population of 1. The sole, 83-year-old resident is the city’s mayor, librarian, and bartender.

The entire town of Whittier, Alaska lives under one roof.

The number of bourbon barrels in Kentucky outnumbers the state’s population by more than two million.

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