Tag : Bone

Washington: A new study suggests how scientists can use artificial intelligence to predict how cancer may affect the probability of fractures along the spinal column. In the U.S., more than 1.6 million cases of cancer are diagnosed every year, and about 10 per cent of those patients experience spinal metastasis -- when the disease spreads from other places in the body to the spine. One of the biggest clinical concerns patients face is the risk of spinal fractures due to these tumours, which can lead to severe pain and spinal instability. "Spinal fracture increases the risk of patient death by about 15 per cent," said Soheil Soghrati, co-author of the study and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at The Ohio State University. "By predicting the outcome of these fractures, our research offers medical experts the opportunity to design better treatment strategies, and help patients make better-informed decisions." While many of the changes the body undergoes when exposed to cancerous lesions are still a mystery, with the power of computational modelling, scientists can get a better idea of what's happening to the spine, said Soghrati. Their study, published in the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, describes how the researchers trained an AI-assisted framework called ReconGAN to create a digital twin or a virtual reconstruction of a patient's vertebra. Unlike 3D printing, where a virtual model is turned into a physical object, the concept of a digital twin involves building a computer simulation of its real-life counterpart without creating it physically. Such a simulation can be used to predict an object or system's future performance - in this case, how much stress the vert ...