The ACR Launches AI-Lab to Empower Radiologists to Learn About AI

The American College of Radiology (ACR) Data Science Institute today launched the ACR AI-Lab free software platform to empower radiologists to participate in the creation, validation and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare.

The ACR AI-Lab aims to help radiology advance and will provide radiologists with the tools to develop AI algorithms at their own facilities, using their own data to meet their own clinical needs.

“By enabling radiologists to actively participate in all aspects of AI development, we can expect to see high impact healthcare solutions growing rapidly,” said Bibb Allen Jr., M.D., chief medical officer at ACR Data Science Institute.

Radiologists will be able to learn about AI, contribute AI datasets, share AI algorithms, evaluate AI models, develop AI models and combine the models through transfer learning and model ensembles.

The lab platform will support future U.S. Food and Drug Administration initiatives that use real-world data for adaptive learning for algorithm improvement and monitoring of continuously learning algorithms.

“Enabling radiologists to develop AI on-premises, at their own institutions, will unlock massively larger data stores available for the development of AI,” said Keith Dreyer, Ph.D., chief science officer at ACR Data Science Institute. “This will rapidly expand the AI solutions available to us all.”

Allen Jr. told Inside Digital Health™ that the ACR wants the radiology specialty to be the best data scientists and that this software will help them get there.

The software could help radiologists who fear AI will one day replace them, better understand the technology.

“I think the only way radiologists should fear AI is if they allow others to define the conversation around it,” Allen Jr. told us.

Allen Jr. feels that there are tasks that radiologists can do that machines can’t, such as interacting with other doctors and patients.

He said that we never want to be too dependent on software and that humans will always have to be present to override any error that could be made by the technology.

While Allen Jr. said that there will always be an important role for AI and that the technology will change the role of the radiologist, the radiologist will need to make the final decision.

Allen Jr. then quoted Curtis Langlotz, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology at Stanford University Medical Center, who asked and answered if AI will ever replace radiologists.

“I say the answer is no — but radiologists who use AI will replace radiologists who don’t,” Langlotz said, according to Allen Jr.

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