The Artificial Intelligence (AI) division of Google based in London, DeepMind, will attempt to differentiate between healthy and cancerous tissue by analysing 700 CT and MRI scans from former University College London patients.
DeepMind will then try to work out a mathematical algorithm to further research into targeted radiotherapy treatments for head and neck cancers including brain tumours.
At present image segmentation, the process used by radiologists to map out a treatment plan, can take in excess of four hours. One of the aims of the project is to reduce this to just one hour.
Dr Justine Alford, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK said:
“Using computers to help plan radiotherapy could help deliver better treatment for patients by speeding up the process and improving accuracy.
“We won’t know until results from this innovative new project are produced.”
Ownership of the date would remain with UCL and Google has stated that it will securely destroy any information that is provided.
Previously Google DeepMind has worked with the NHS on an eyecare project and a kidney monitoring project.