AI-assisted VIA Screening of Cervical Cancer

This project aims to research and develop AI-assisted VIA screening using mobile-captured photos to build a more consistent and accurate smartphone-based cervical cancer screening tool that can be used by nurses and community health workers as an assistive tool.

PROBLEM:

Cervical cancer is the fourth-most common cancer among women globally that leads to 90% deaths LMICs.
Can be easily cured if diagnosed at an early stage and treated properly but Nepal lacks the accessibility in early-stage screenings.
VIA (Visual Inspection Using Acetic Acid), is a simpler, inexpensive & accessible test that can be adapted suitably for low-resource settings
But VIA is subjective, that is dependent on human expertise which is often unavailable in low-resource settings such as primary and community health care settings.

OUR PROPOSAL:

To research and develop AI-assisted VIA screening using mobile captured photos.
To build more consistent and accurate smartphone based cervical cancer screening tool that can be used by nurses and community health workers.

PROJECT STATUS:

Initial stage of data collection – capturing multiple images over the span of one minute and ongoing validation studies.
Three different health camps have been set up to follow the data collection protocol 57 patients from these camps have been a part of the validation study VIA test conducted on 758 patients so far.
(Target: 1500 patients).
To reduce the limitations, we plan to establish an open-source database portal for other people to contribute as well and make the screening as applicable and accurate as possible with the help of the AI- model
Further aim to design a mobile application that can be used for testing in hospitals and low-resource settings.

PROJECT Co-LEADS:

Dr. Bishesh Khanal, NAAMII

Dr. Archana Shrestha, IISH

PROJECT TEAM:

Kanchan Poudel, Research Assistant

IISH members

FUNDED BY:

Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA)

CLINICAL PARTNERS:

Institute for Implementation Science & Health (IISH)

Budhanilakantha Municipality