Can doctors use artificial intelligence in MRI scans to help people with MS?
Doctors use MRI scans to identify areas of damage, or lesions, in the brain and spinal cord. Unfortunately, some subtle lesions may be missed by human error.
It’s not currently known whether having these subtle new lesions on MRI scans also increase the chance of relapses and disability. If it does, then identifying more lesions on MRI scans could have many positive effects.
There are tools which use artificial intelligence (AI) to help doctors to analyse MRI. Previous research with these tools has shown they're highly effective at identifying these subtle lesions. They can also provide information about other changes caused by MS. Such as, brain shrinkage and markers of smouldering MS.
One of these tools automatically analyses an MRI scan as soon as a person with MS has had their scan. No identifiable information leaves the hospital. It can detect different things on the scan, such as number and size of lesions. It adds these to the person’s healthcare record, visible to the neurologist and MS nurse. The tool also compares the new scan to any previous scans that person may have had and maps changes onto the scan. So, the radiologist can produce a more accurate MRI report in considerably less time.
About the project
The team want to bring one of these cutting edge AI tools for interpreting MRI scans to NHS clinics. They’ll initially install it at two UK NHS hospitals, but hope to extend this in the future.
The team want to use this information to understand whether having subtle lesions, which were previously missed, is linked to having more relapses or disability later.
They’ll use existing information from more than 3,000 people with MS in the two hospitals where this MRI tool will be used.
First they'll try the tool on previous MRI scans to see if there are any subtle lesions that were missed. They can assess how accurate the tool is in this context.
Then they can look at whether people with previously-missed lesions had more relapses or more severe disability than people that didn’t have any new lesions.
They also want to find out if NHS radiologists, neurologists and MS nurses value these AI tools, to understand if they would be useful in the future. At the end of the study they’ll use questionnaires to ask whether they reduce the time needed to report each scan and if this has an impact on MRI scan waiting lists. And, if they are helpful for making treatment decisions.
Finally, the team want to build knowledge for future research. So, for those that consent, the MRI scans are automatically added to databases MSBase and MS Register.
How will it help people with MS?
The results from this project will help the researchers decide whether the tool should be extended to 12 intended sites, which support more than 20,000 people living with MS. By understanding how subtle lesions can impact disability and relapses, the team can demonstrate the need for this tool.
Further to this, detailed information from the MRI scans of more than 20,000 patients would also transform wider MS research.
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