PIGEONS CAN DETECT CANCER

You read that right.

Having proved that pigeons are smart little flyers – this is taking it to the next level. Pigeons were trained to learn biopsy slides and distinguish between breast tissue and tumors.

 Pigeons “beak screened” images which were either benign or malignant breast tissue. Within 2 weeks they were 85% accurate in identifying the tumors. However, by calculating the pigeons detection on either side – the accuracy rate is 99%.

The pigeons were able to utilize this new expertise to spot tumours in unseen microscope images, as well as “examining” mammograms, though a second mammogram test (recognising suspicious lumps) proved too tricky for them.

Having said that, even doctors, with years of study in their pocket, have a harder time with that second mammogram.

Nonetheless, this suggests that pigeons could be trained to be medical image observers and could help to find better ways to train pathologists and computer systems by determining the impact of color, contrast, brightness, and image compression artifacts on diagnostic performance.

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