Sreemoyee Chatterjee
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Written By: Sreemoyee Chatterjee | Updated : August 13, 2018 2:28 PM IST
Those suffering from brain cancer may now have a chance of avoiding the adverse side-effects of chemotherapy as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have come up with an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can curb toxic chemotherapy dosing for Glioblastoma, the most severe form of brain cancer and aid in improving the quality of life for these patients, according to a report released by PTI. This kind of tumour is a malignant one that hits the brain or spinal cord, the treatment course of which continues for 5 long years.
As of now, a patient suffering from Glioblastoma has to undergo a combination of radiation therapy and multiple drugs that need to be taken every month. While doctors administer the safest drug dose to reduce the tumour, these strong pharmaceuticals have side effects which can harm your body severely. MIT created self-learning machine learning technique focuses on a model that could make dosing regimens less toxic but still effective, according to a media report by Deccan Herald. It deals with an optimal treatment plan that emphasises on reducing the frequency and potency of doses, yet efficiently shrinking the size of the tumour, so much so that you will not find much difference between this novel treating method and the traditional way. Using this method, patients will be required to take the medicine only twice a year instead of monthly dose.
Pratik Shah from MIT who has worked on the project, reportedly said: ''We kept the goal, where we have to help patients by reducing tumour sizes but, at the same time, we want to make sure the quality of life - the dosing toxicity - doesn't lead to overwhelming sickness and harmful side effects.''
This AI based model made use of reinforced learning (RL) technique which has been inspired by behavioural psychology, say the experts where the model has learnt to support a kind of behaviour, resulting in the desired outcome.
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