Why AI-based Computational Pathology Detects More Cancers

Chances are you or someone you love has had a biopsy to check for cancer. Doctors got a tissue sample and they sent it into a pathology lab, and at some point you got a result back. If you were lucky, it was negative and there was no cancer. But have you ever wondered exactly what happens in between those steps? Until recently, it’s been a meticulous but imperfect manual process where a pathologist would put a thin slice of tissue under a high-powered microscope and examine the cells by eye, looking for patterns that indicate malignancy. But now the process is going digital—and growing more accurate.

Harry's guest this week is Leo Grady, CEO of, Paige AI, which makes an AI-driven test called Paige Prostate. Grady says that in a clinical study, pathologists who had help from the Paige system accurately diagnosed prostate cancer almost 97 percent of the time, up from 90 percent without the tool. That translates into a 70 percent reduction in false negatives—nice odds if your own health is on the line. This week on the show, Grady explains explain how the Paige test works, how the company trained its software to be more accurate than a human pathologist, how it won FDA approval for the test, and what it could all mean for the future of cancer diagnosis and treatment.

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Full Transcript

Harry Glorikian: Hello. I’m Harry Glorikian. Welcome to The Harry Glorikian Show, the interview podcast that explores how technology is changing everything we know about healthcare.

Artificial intelligence. Big data. Predictive analytics. In fields like these, breakthroughs are happening way faster than most people realize.

If you want to be proactive about your own health and the health of your loved ones, you’ll need to learn everything you can about how medicine is changing and how you can take advantage of all the new options.

Explaining this approaching world is the mission of my new book, The Future You. And it’s also our theme here on the show, where we bring you conversations with the innovators, caregivers, and patient advocates who are transforming the healthcare system and working to push it in positive directions.

Chances are you or someone you love has had a biopsy to check for cancer.

Doctors got a tissue sample and they sent it into a pathology lab, and at some point you got a result back. If you were lucky it was negative and there was no cancer.

But have you ever wondered exactly what happens in between those steps?

Well, until recently, it’s been an extremely meticulous manual process.

A pathologist would create a very thin slice of your tissue, put it under a high-powered microscope, and examine the cells by eye, looking for patterns that indicate malignancy.

But recently the process has started to go digital.

For one thing, the technology to make a digital scan of a pathology slide has been getting cheaper. That’s a no-brainer, since it makes it way easier for a pathologist to share an image if they want a second opinion.

But once the data is available digitally, it opens up a bunch of additional possibilities.

Including letting computers try their hand at pathology.

That’s what’s happening at a company called Paige AI, which makes a newly FDA-approved test for prostate cancer called Paige Prostate.

The test uses computer vision and machine learning to find spots on prostate biopsy slides that look suspicious, so a human pathologist can take a closer look.

So why should you care?