Evaluation of Artificial Intelligence based assessment of Smart Scope® images for single visit cervix cancer screening in low resource setting: A retrospective study

Cancer of the cervix is a leading cause of death in Indian women and contributes to nearly one fourth of the world burden of cervical cancer incidence and mortality. Access to screening and health services is a major barrier for success in cervical cancer screening programs. Present screening tests such as Pap test, visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) test, HPV test have their own limitations.

Periwinkle Technologies has developed a portable, easy-to-use, electricity independent, trans-vaginal digital device, “Smart Scope ® CX†(SSCX) for cervical health checkup. It offers digital logs and allows diagnostic triaging through remote consultation. It captures digital cervical images and allows remote expert referral too if required.

To remove the subjectivity of VIA test and to reduce the burden of diagnostic triaging on tertiary care experts albeit remotely, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based auto- image - assessment feature has been introduced in the software platform of Smart Scope®. This is expected to provide single visit immediate auto-assessment of cervical health.

Over a past few years Smart Scope is being used for cervical health checkups, with the consent of participant, in various affiliated Anganwadies, PHCs, UHTC, RHTC, OPD and in health checkup camps for clear, close and magnified visualization of cervix. Lakhs of images have been captured using Smart Scope.   The above mentioned centers will be contacted and the uterine cervix images of the women who were screened using smart scope will be obtained from these centers.  The images will be  loaded on 3 Tabs and will be given to  3 expert colposcopist for evaluation of cervix health.  These experts will be blinded to  each others opinion.  Simultaneously the same images will be auto-analyzed using AI software developed by Periwinkle Technologies. Accuracy of AI will be calculated based on comparison of AI outcome and Expert’s assessment.