An article in Nature Biomedical Engineering explores how researchers are developing an artificial intelligence platform to diagnose and treat congenital cataracts, a rare disease that causes permanent vision loss.
The research team — led by Erping Long and Haotian Lin of Guangzhou, China-based Sun Yat-sen University — developed CC-Cruiser, an AI platform that uses deep learning to risk stratify populations for screening, diagnose patients for the disease and provide clinical support to ophthalmologists making treatment decisions.
The researchers launched a multihospital clinical trial to validate the utility of CC-Cruiser and are working to compare the AI platform's performance with trained ophthalmologists. The team wrote that the trial will "explore the management of rare diseases and the cloud-based AI platform for providing medical suggestions for non-specialized hospitals."
"The collaborative platform could be extended to the management of other rare diseases, and should be validated in different clinical scenarios," they wrote.