Lee Se-dol reviews the match after winning the fourth match over Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul, South Korea, on March 13. (Photo : REUTERS)
Tech giant Google has planned to teach its computers, how to diagnose ocular disease, a condition related to the eyes. The company is planning to use millions of anonymized eye scans for the same purpose.
Google's ultimate goal is to teach its computer program use artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize the signs and symptoms associated with two forms of eye disease that includes age-related muscular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.
For the same purpose, the company has collaborated with a British eye hospital, according to USA Today. The California-based company is planning to use AI to study the medical records of more than 1.6 million medical records belonging to more than 1.6 million patients in London.
Google announced the partnership between its artificial intelligence company DeepMind and Moorsfield Eye Hospital in London on July 4, Monday. The company decided to enter the field of eye disease diagnosis considering the fact that around 10 to 20 percent of the errors made in the diagnosis of eye disease through patient interview and analysis of charts can be prevented by the use of artificial intelligence.
According to Google, artificial intelligence can equip a machine with an ability to scan millions of documents and records, analyze them and learn from them. This can, in turn, help make a more accurate diagnosis and save time as well.
"With sight loss predicted to double by the year 2050, it is vital we explore the use of cutting-edge technology to prevent eye disease," Peng Tee Khaw of the National Institute for Health Research's Biomedical Research Centre in Ophthalmology at Moorfield Eye Hospital, said in a press statement.
The scans that the hospital is planning to supply to the Google DeepMind's team are historic scans. That is, the research results could be used to improve the quality of treatment provided to the eye patients, but the results would not affect the kind of care and treatment provided to any of the eye patients today.
Google DeepMind previously hit the headlines earlier in 2016 when one of its artificial intelligence system beat a human player three times straight in an ancient board game Go. The system performed up to this level of accuracy by analyzing millions of Go games and playing by itself many more times.
The following video talks about Google DeepMind:
