From replicant’s dream to reality: Imaging AI at Penn Medicine

Our imagination for artificial intelligence is expansive and ambitious. While there are plenty of dystopian tropes, pop culture is full of hopeful examples of what we believe artificial intelligence could bring to us, ranging from operating systems that cure loneliness to assistants that push the limits of humans’ physiological capabilities.
Maybe the most famous fictional AI is Roy Batty—an impossibly strong soldier android (or “replicant” in the “Blade Runner” films). What has made the character enduring is less about his superhuman capabilities, and more about what hewed him closer to our most core desire: to live, and to live longer.
At present, many consumer AI tools fall short of the potential imagined in science fiction. In the medical realm, though, an AI program now widely used at Penn Medicine can give us some of the life-sustaining help that Batty wanted most.
Recently, Penn AInSights, an AI-guided imaging system that helps create a more-precise, three-dimensional view of internal organs, was named a CIO 100 winner for its work in the field of radiology. The program, at its root, is a clinical support tool for physicians, allowing them to look at images of people’s livers, spleens, kidneys, and more to determine with some exactitude if the organs are showing any abnormal traits that could shorten lives.
With this precise knowledge of whether a patient has developed something like fatty liver disease, or is showing warning signs of diabetes, or that their kidneys may fail in time, Penn Medicine’s clinical staff can take steps to help patients sooner and more effectively than ever before, potentially adding years to their lives.