Academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts General Hospital have demonstrated how neural networks can be trained to administer anesthetic during surgery.
Over the past decade, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and deep learning algorithms have been developed and applied to a range of sectors and applications, including in the medical field.
In healthcare, the potential of neural networks and deep learning has been demonstrated in the automatic analysis of large medical datasets to detect patterns and trends; improved diagnosis procedures, tumor detection based on radiology images, and more recently, an exploration into robotic surgery.
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Now, neural networking may have new, previously-unexplored applications in the surgical and drug administration areas.
A team made up of MIT and Mass General scientists, as reported by Tech Xplore[2], have developed and trained a neural network to administrator Propofol, a drug commonly used as general anesthesia when patients are undergoing medical procedures.
In a study due to be published[3] after the virtual-only 2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, the team described how they trained algorithms to correctly apply anesthetic doses.
Datasets including patient data which may change recommended levels of anesthetic -- such as weight, age, and preexisting medical conditions -- as well as models that monitor levels of consciousness during a procedure and subsequent recommended drug doses -- were fed into the network.
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As a new exploration of deep learning applications in the medical field[5], the scientists stuck to a simulated environment and virtual patients. A series of trials were launched