Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) on Wednesday touted the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform designed to assist in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, saying it has an accuracy of 91.7 percent and is capable of transcending the limits of traditional symptom-based assessments.
“The field of psychiatry has long hoped to identify objective biological markers that can help quantify the symptoms [of mental illness],” TVGH Medical AI Development Center deputy director Albert Yang (楊智傑) said.
Due to the lack of objective diagnostic tools, psychiatric evaluations have long relied primarily on clinical observations and subjective interviews, making it difficult for physicians to fully understand a patient’s condition and changes in brain function, Yang said.
Photo: CNA
With that challenge in mind, he led the team that developed BrainProbe, the world’s first AI-powered platform capable of assisting in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, a mental illness linked to neurotransmission abnormalities, and degeneration in brain structure and function.
Based on data from more than 1,500 participants recorded since 2012 — including healthy people and those with schizophrenia — BrainProbe quantified brain abnormalities related to schizophrenia using magnetic resonance imaging scans and deep learning algorithms, Yang said.
Yang cited the case of a 30-year-old who was experiencing auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions as an example of how the platform aids in the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
“BrainProbe was able to detect signs of degeneration in his brain function and structure — particularly in deeper regions such as the insula and temporal lobe,” Yang said, adding that abnormalities associated with schizophrenia prompted further evaluation, and the man was later confirmed to have the disease.
The most important capability of BrainProbe is its ability to track changes in the brain as it ages, he said.
The platform has established a brain aging prediction index and a mechanism for monitoring pathological changes in brain structure and function, he added.
BrainProbe is still under review by the Food and Drug Administration, but people can access the platform at TVGH on a self-pay basis through a clinical trial program.
Asked about the development of the platform, Yang said his team is collaborating with medical institutions abroad to incorporate data from other populations.
“We hope this platform can be applied across different ethnic groups to enable more accurate research,” he added.
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