Stomach cancer is one of the top 10 cancers in Taiwan, and H. pylori infection is an important risk factor. Once infected, it changes the "stomach phase" and it can take up to a month to determine whether there are any abnormalities in the mucous membrane of the stomach from the time of gastroscopy to the time of returning to the clinic for a biopsy. According to the latest release of medical AI developed by the NTU Hospital, based on the gastroscopic images from the 10 branches of the NTU system over the past decade, the artificial intelligence model can accurately determine the gastric phase in just 9 seconds, with an accuracy rate of over 90%.
The second- and third-line therapies for refractory H. pylori infections developed by NTUH have been published in the leading international journal Prickly Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and have become an important reference for treatment both domestically and internationally.
With the support of the National Science and Technology Council and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, NTUH President Ming-hsien Wu has coordiniated the Taiwan Gastrointestinal Diseases and H. pylori Clinical Trial Consortium by integrating several medical centres in Taiwan to conduct multi-centre clinical trials and H. pylori screening. The standardised incidence of stomach cancer has also continued to decline.
The traditional gastric interpretation is laborious and time-consuming, requiring gastroscopy and tissue biopsy, which can take at least a month to be interpreted by pathologists, and is a major obstacle for residents in areas where medical resources are scarce and transportation is difficult. NTUH has successfully developed an artificial intelligence model that can determine gastric phases from gastroscopic images and accurately identify abnormalities such as atrophic gastritis and pre-cancerous lesions, and has already been used in Matsu.
"What used to take a month to do can now be done in just nine seconds", said Dr Li, he hoped the model could be developed in a multi-faceted way, helping doctors in rural areas to improve their judgement and reduce medical inequality between rural and metropolitan areas. As stomach cancer can easily metastasise to the liver, resulting in poor treatment outcomes, the two key prevention keys are the decontamination of Helicobacter pylori and regular follow-up of precancerous lesions every two to three years.
Wu said that Matsu used to have the highest incidence of stomach cancer in the country, but after 20 years of efforts, NTU Hospital has reduced the prevalence rate from nearly 70 percent to less than 10 percent, and the incidence of stomach cancer has dropped by 53 percent, making it a world-renowned benchmark. Now with the development of AI technology, it has successfully broken through the limitations of time and space to address medical inequalities, and it is hoped that this can be extended to the whole of Taiwan in the future.
