HCPSS Student Develops Mobile Diagnostic System To Detect Cancer In Tumor Samples

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — A senior at Centennial High School is making waves now that a scientific paper he wrote has been published in the international, peer-reviewed journal Cancer Informatics.

William Gao, who participates in the gifted and talented advanced research program, began working on applying artificial intelligence to public health as a freshman. As a sophomore, he took the independent research class again to delve deeper into the AI-public health connection.

“Breast cancer mortality rates tend to be higher in areas that have fewer resources, in part because there is a shortage of pathologists in those areas. It takes longer for people to get diagnosed, and that makes it more likely that their cancer isn’t treated until it’s reached a later stage,” Gao explained. “I wanted to investigate whether artificial intelligence could be used to help address these issues and improve survival rates, especially in resource-constrained regions.”

Mentored by a statistics professor at UMBC and a researcher at Meta Inc., Gao developed an artificial intelligence-driven, resource-efficient, mobile diagnostic system to identify cancerous regions in patient tumor samples. His hope is that it can be deployed to hospitals in remote areas, aiding diagnoses and improving diagnosis times.

In the spring of his junior year, Gao organized his findings into a paper, which he submitted to the international, peer-reviewed journal Cancer Informatics. In November 2023, Gao’s article, “Designing a Deep Learning-Driven Resource-Efficient Diagnostic System for Metastatic Breast Cancer: Reducing Long Delays of Clinical Diagnosis and Improving Patient Survival in Developing Countries,” was published online.

Read more at HCPSS News