BL Science, a subsidiary of BL Pharmtech, said on Thursday that it signed an agreement with Kumoh National Institute of Technology, a local university, to jointly develop a cancer diagnosis solution utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) in tissue and cellular pathology diagnosis.

BL Science is a diagnostic company that has previously developed GynPad, which can diagnose human papillomavirus (HPV), the cause of cervical cancer in women, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In April this year, GynPad also received medical device approval from the FDA. 

The research team led by Professor Ko Jae-pil of Computer Science at Kumoh National Institute of Technology plans to develop a digital pathology AI solution that can significantly increase the accuracy and efficiency of cancer diagnosis by using AI in tissue and cellular pathology diagnosis.

In particular, the solution will enable efficient biopsies as AI learns accumulated data to quickly diagnose cancer based on images of tissues and cells, the company said.

Professor Ko’s team has prior research experience from working on projects related to patient health prediction and monitoring systems using vital signs signals and new brain tumor segmentation model based on the 3D-U2-Net, a medical image segmentation technology.

"The core of this joint development is to implement a deep learning model by segmenting and evaluating cancer classification in multiple biological tissues, and to improve accuracy through AI learning and training," said an official from BL Science. "Based on the tissue and cellular pathology diagnosis data and experience that BL Science has accumulated over the years, we will aim to create a paradigm shift in the cancer diagnosis market by combining the deep learning image recognition AI technologies."