Alibaba's Coca AI Model Outperforms Radiologists in Colorectal Cancer Detection

Alibaba Group Holding has released an AI model named Coca, developed by its research arm Damo Academy, which claims higher sensitivity than radiologists in detecting early-stage colorectal cancer from non-contrast CT scans. In a study involving over 27,000 people, Coca identified five previously missed cases, achieving 86.6% sensitivity and 99.8% specificity. Damo Academy stated that Coca outperformed 10 radiologists by 20.4% in sensitivity. The model was developed with Chinese institutions including Guangdong General Hospital. Current diagnostic methods like colonoscopy are invasive, while Coca offers a non-invasive, cost-effective alternative. The findings were published in the Annals of Oncology peer-reviewed journal last week.