What impact does AI have on the Radiology? Interview with an expert

Artificial Intelligence stands on the forefront of innovation in many industries, and the Healthcare industry is no exception. Ophthalmologists, cardiologists, dermatologists, radiologists and many other specialists are feeling the influence of technology and are looking forward to the newest software developments to help them with their everyday routines.

To make AI algorithms work, thousands of data sets are annotated by medical professionals daily. We’ve talked to Mindy Support’s Iryna Vasyliv, a radiologist with 10+ years of experience, to share her professional expertise and vision of healthcare data annotation development.

How is deep learning (AI) impacting radiology today?

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, especially deep learning, have shown incredible progress in image-recognition tasks like lesion detection or segmentation. Different types of neural networks  from simple to complicated have found their way into plenty of applications in the medical image analysis field and they are improving. daily.

 Do you think AI will ever replace radiologists?

This question is my favorite one. Yes, AI will replace radiologists. But as was mentioned at the first conference devoted to AI in radiology «Intelligence. Innovation. Imaging» in Barcelona 2019 – AI will replace only radiologists that are not using AI tools. AI in radiology is not about taking our work, but rather working with radiologists hand in hand.

How is AI helping to improve the productivity of radiologists?

Radiologists visually evaluate medical images for the detection, characterization and monitoring of diseases. AI methods can help  recognize complex patterns in imaging data but it will be quantitative characterization of medical imaging.

Why have you joined the Mindy Support team?

I was inspired by the conference I have mentioned in the previous question «Intelligence. Innovation. Imaging». In April 2019, I strongly decided my future career. Since then I was looking for a company I could join. Nowadays I’m living-out my dream by being part of a team which allows me to actualize my own ideas in AI.

What do you enjoy the most in your work?

Radiology is the most interesting specialty, «heavy industry» of medicine. You can’t find any subspecialty that can work without the help of a radiologist. Radiology was definitely the right choice, probably the only one – just kidding :). My work is my passion. It is like a lot of puzzles, by resolving them I help patients.

You’re a recognized expert and are often invited to top healthcare events. What is the most discussed topic nowadays?

It is interesting that you asked this question because I am probably one of the first radiologists in Ukraine that started doing outsourced AI projects. I think AI, in general, is the most discussed topic. Just when you start delving down deeper, you see that there are a lot of branches – segmentation, machine bias, prognostic models. In my opinion prognostic models are the most promising, because in other cases AI should be controlled by a doctor, like lesion detection, tissue characterization, but in prognostic models AI is even better than a human. AI excludes the possibility of human error compared to medical professionals, as they are often exhausted due to long shifts, huge workload and many stressful situations at work.