Ahead of World Cancer Day on 4 February, scientists are revealing a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed to help grade cancer, by analysing cell division.

In numerous cancer types, counting the number of cells undergoing division, known as mitotic figures, serves as a key indicator of cancer aggressiveness, or grade. This information helps inform treatment pathways, making it a crucial asessment tool. Traditional mitosis counting is both time-consuming and plagued by poor reliability. To address this, scientists have developed a new tool, MitPro, which uses AI to count and profile mitosis.

Histofy, a spin-out company from The University of Warwick that is leading developer of AI solutions for pathology, has engineered the tool to accurately profile mitosis throughout the entire tumour sample. This identifies the most suitable areas for further analysis.

On this recent article in the Quanta magazine, Alex Dixon, who wrote in Haskell the first solver for the problem, commented:

For the past 50 years, Vector Addition Systems—a simple but powerful computational model—have been a topic of great interest in theoretical CS. The reachability problem in that model asks whether we can get from some configuration to another.

The problem sounds relatively easy on a first glance, and an exponential lower bound held firm for over 40 years. Work by excellent theoreticians, including familiar names from Warwick DCS, finally closed the difficulty of the problem in 2021, concluding that it is very, very difficult indeed.

We are seeking PhD candidates in the topic of Multiagent Systems and related areas, with particular emphasis on one or more of: computational social choice, algorithmic game theory, multiagent learning, and social and economic networks. The multiagent systems researchers at University of Warwick include Markus BrillLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Ramanujan SridharanLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Long Tran-ThanhLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Debmalya Mandal and Paolo TurriniLink opens in a new window