PGH eyes AI for brain tumor detection

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine General Hospital (PGH) is studying the viability of using Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) software that can detect brain tumors in five minutes.

PGH director Dr. Gerardo Legaspi said as soon as Taiwan AI Labs earns approval from the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA), hospital officials would be conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the company’s DeepMets Software.

The software was presented during a recent forum at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Manila.

“The revolutionary software, approved by the Taiwan FDA in 2019, presents significant advancements in brain tumor detection with its capability to produce results in just five minutes,” UP Manila said.

The AI was credited for reducing the waiting time for detecting brain tumors by health care facilities in Taiwan, with the software providing “pioneering” medical imaging that uses algorithms in detecting tumors at an early stage.

“This software was initially intended to help radiologists detect metastasis, especially during Gamma Knife radiosurgery because if you miss one tiny lesion, there are likely consequences… in the case of outpatients, patients normally need to wait at least seven days for the result. But now, we can immediately get the result,” Dr. Hsin Mei Wu, head of Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH)’s radiology department, said.

Ethan Tu, founder and chief executive officer of Taiwan AI Labs, assured the public of the software’s safety and confidentiality in terms of patient information. 

He said DeepMets works by analyzing uploaded data or images through Federated Learning (FL), which is a configuration that allows devices to learn from obtained data without sharing the data itself, thus keeping everything private.

“This machine-learning approach allows collaborative training between multiple devices or systems while keeping raw data on each device. FL does not send data on a single server. It preserves privacy by sharing model updates and not the raw data,” UP Manila said.

DeepMets Software was jointly developed by Taiwan AI Labs and a team at TVGH and its subsidiary, TAIMedImg. 

Dr. Kai Wei Yu of the TVGH radiology department said six tertiary hospitals in Taipei contributed to the initial data collection for training the AI model that analyzes brain tumors.

The AI model is being used in some medical centers in Vietnam.

The forum was organized as part of the 2024 Manila Economic and Cultural Office-Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines Joint Research: Health, Agriculture and Training initiative project.