Google Science Fair: 17-Year-Old Builds Neural Network To Detect Breast Cancer

Google Science Fair has served as an excellent platform for young minds to showcase their talent through visionary ideas aimed at making the world a better place to live. One such amazing idea came from 17-year-old Brittany Wenger to develop a global neural network based in the cloud that can assist doctors in diagnosing breast cancer.

Her idea won her the Grand Prize of $50,000 for a scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos islands, and an internship with one of the fair’s sponsors. Google Science Fair is an online<span style="color: #000000;"> </span>science competition sponsored by<span style="color: #000000;"> </span>Google<span style="color: #000000;">, </span>Lego<span style="color: #000000;">, </span>CERN<span style="color: #000000;">, </span>National Geographic and<span style="color: #000000;"> </span><em>Scientific American</em><span style="color: #000000;">. </span>



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Artificial Neural Networks, though modeled after the human brain are capable of performing on a greater level. ANNs can detect patterns more accurately when fed with more training data. Wenger's purpose behind this whole idea was to make the breast cancer biopsies less invasive than the procedures available today.

Brittany's cloud-based neural network accepts nine different input features which are then compared to the training examples, returning results of tumor detection with a 99.11% accuracy, a laudable achievement. The neural network is deployed in cloud using Google's app engine making it readily available throughout existing medical systems, web browsers and mobile apps.

Brittany Wenger's presentation slides can be referenced here<span style="color: #000000;">.</span>

Source: Geek Image Credit: mashable