The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre's Dr Simon Temple, a Consultant Clinical Scientist, was featured on Radio 5 Live's breakfast show this morning as part of their coverage of the UK Government AI summit at Bletchley Park.
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre was one of the first cancer hospitals to use AI as part of our radiotherapy treatment planning and Simon has played a key role in leading that work. In a clip broadcast at 07:50 this morning on Radio 5 Live, Simon explained how we use AI software to help us outline vital organs on some CT scans so radiotherapy treatments can be carefully planned to target the tumour and protect surrounding tissue.
Our highly-trained staff then carefully check the results and make any adjustments needed but the fact they don't have to manually outline everything on each individual slice from a CT scan saves our doctors and dosimetrists thousands of hours of time each year - time that can then be spent on other work including patient care. (Each CT scan can have up to 50 slices so outlining is a painstaking process that can take a considerable amount of time.)
It also means that patients can start their treatment more quickly because their treatment plans take less time to produce, while maintaining the same high quality and accuracy.
You can hear Simon explaining how we use AI in treatment planning if you listen again to the show on BBC iPlayer. Simon's clip was played at 07:50.