Alibaba Group Holding's research arm, Damo Academy, has open-sourced an AI model capable of identifying nearly 150 abdominal conditions, including cancers, by reading computed tomography (CT) scans. The vision-language model, called Damo Radar, was designed to analyse contrast-enhanced CT scans covering 18 abdominal organs and identify a broad range of diseases and other abnormalities. In nearly 40,000 real-world examinations, the model achieved an average area under the curve (AUC) of 0.913 across 146 clinical findings.

In a comparative study involving 26 human radiologists from multiple hospitals, the model's average accuracy exceeded that of 23 participants. With the model's help, radiologists also managed to improve their ability to prevent missed diagnoses by 10 per cent while reducing the time required by more than 30 per cent. The research was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

Several institutions took part in the study alongside Alibaba, including a hospital affiliated with Zhejiang University. The model's release builds on a string of recent medical AI advances by Alibaba as Chinese technology giants increasingly explore the use of cutting-edge technology in healthcare settings. The division released the Coca AI model, which it said was more sensitive than radiologists in spotting early-stage colorectal cancer from CT scans.

The model was co-developed with Chinese institutions including the Guangdong General Hospital.