Study finds pigeons uncommonly
good at distinguishing cancerous from normal breast tissue
Date: November 18, 2015
Source: University of Iowa
If pigeons went to medical school
and specialized in pathology or radiology, they'd be pretty good at
distinguishing digitized microscope slides and mammograms of normal from
cancerous breast tissue, according to a new study from the University of Iowa
and the University of California, Davis.
With some training and selective
food reinforcement, pigeons performed as well as humans in categorizing
digitized slides and mammograms of benign and malignant human breast tissue,
the researchers found. The pigeons were able to generalize what they had
learned, so that when the researchers showed them a completely new set of
normal and cancerous digitized slides, they correctly identified them. Their
accuracy, like that of humans, was modestly affected by the presence or absence
of color in the images, as well as by degrees of image compression. The pigeons
also learned to correctly identify cancer-relevant micro calcifications on
mammograms, but they had a tougher time classifying suspicious masses on
mammograms -- a task considered difficult even for skilled human observers, the
authors noted in the paper, published online on Wednesday in the
journal PLOS One.
"These results go a long way
toward establishing a profound link between humans and our animal kin,"
said Edward Wasserman, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the UI
and study co-author. "Even distant relatives -- like people and pigeons --
are adept at perceiving and categorizing the complex visual patterns that are
presented in pathology and radiology images, surely a task for which nature has
not specifically prepared us."
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