Tech Desk 
Mar 17, 2025
An undated, representationl image of AI in healthcare. — Unsplash
It's a no-brainer that artificial intelligence (AI) has adavanced way beyond typical automation, encompassing and facilitating in a diversity of fields including education, science, healthcare and whatnot.
An exemplary testimonial of AI's integration and its utmost role in healthcare has recently emerged into limelight as a team of Chinese scientists have developed an AI tool capable of predicting liver cancer recurrence risk with 82.2% accuracy, Dawn reported while citing the journal Nature.
Liver cancer prediction tool TIMES
Having designed a scoring system named TIMES, the researchers are associated with the University of Science and Technology of China with led Sun Cheng in the lead as the chief scientist.
TIMES quantifies spatial distribution patterns of immune cells within the tumour microenvironment to predict the possibility of resurfacing. It comes as the world's first liver cancer recurrence prediction tool integrating spatial immune data.
The research demonstrated that health-related repercussions are not just defined by the quantity of immune cells, but also by spatial organisation.
Chinese liver cancer prediction tool available free online
The AI system was trained on 61 patients' liver cancer tissue samples. The best part of the story is that researchers have opened a free online version of TIMES to let patients around the world to upload pathological staining images and conduct instant risk assesment.
It was also reported that liver cancer is the third biggest cause of cancer-related deaths globally, and unfortunately, it the risk of its recurrence is as high as 70%.
The AI tool comes at a time when accurate prediction of its recurrence remained a critical challenge for both the spheres of science and healthcare
