Remarkable Accuracy: Cancer-Sniffing Dogs And AI

The objective is to enhance the ways of detecting cancer as early as possible.

Credit: SpotitEarly

SpotitEarly, a biotech startup working to transform cancer screening, just released a new study, pointing to the successful results of using both artificial intelligence and canines to detect cancer early in breath samples.

The researchers call this a “bio-AI hybrid” cancer screening approach. By using AI to assist cancer-sniffing dogs - which have long been utilized by various laboratories to detect disease - cancers including breast, lung, prostate, and colorectal cancers were able to be detected with high rates of success.

The research has just been published in Nature and marks the largest clinical trial to date for cancer detection using both AI and trained canines.

The team at SpotitEarly analyzed breath samples from over 1,400 individuals between the ages of 22 and 94. The combination of AI and the remarkable abilities of cancer-sniffing dogs produced highly accurate results across the four targeted cancer types:

Breast cancer: 94% sensitivity

Lung cancer: 97% sensitivity

Prostate cancer: 97% sensitivity

Colorectal cancer: 86% sensitivity

“Discovering cancer early is critical to recovery. I am pleased to see these promising results and that this new research supports and validates our non-invasive, self-administered cancer screening method,” Len Lichtenfeld, MD, chief medical officer of SpotitEarly and former deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said in a statement.

Today, says SpotitEarly, only 14 percent of cancers in the U.S. are diagnosed following a recommended screening test. However, with their easy-to-use breath collection kit, more people could potentially take the test at home and get pre-screened for multiple types of cancer even at early stages.