Lucida Medical and Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT) have commenced a multi-centre research project in the UK to establish the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid in detecting prostate cancer utilising real-world data.

The Prostate Intelligence (Pi) technology of Lucida Medical leverages radiogenomics, machine learning and image processing to assess magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

Previous study findings demonstrated that Pi could aid in automating labour-intensive activities, such as marking out lesions, and reduce the need for invasive biopsies with high accuracy and consistency.

Furthermore, the technology obtained the CE mark for use in hospitals.

Named Prostate AI Research – 1 (PAIR-1), the new retrospective trial will obtain data on 2,100 people who were diagnosed at seven different centres.

This will aid in testing the software with the similar types of patients, scanners and hospitals that would be used in the practical clinical setting and without affecting the care of patients.

The trial will analyse the technology’s potential to boost the accuracy of diagnosis and is expected to be helpful to more than 100,000 patients in the UK every year.

Lucida Medical co-founder and chief medical officer professor Evis Sala said: “Now Pi has CE marking, clinical studies such as this are crucial to demonstrate the performance of the system in real-world clinical use.

“HHFT has brought together a group of Trusts representative of the wide range of settings across the National Health Service (NHS), from major teaching centres to district general hospitals.”

For the NHS to adopt this technology, its preciseness should be proven in various settings.

Led by HHFT, this collaborative research will focus on testing the working of the software in various hospitals under the NHS and with all key MRI scanner manufacturers.

In addition, the study will analyse and, if required, will calibrate settings as well as establish and test the expected performance of the technology.