First prize at this year’s Google Science Fair went to Brittany Wegner, 17, for her cloud-based neural network—an artificial “brain” that is able to asses tissue samples for breast cancer.
Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer is essentially a computer program that mimics brain waves. For her Google Science Fair project, Brittany built a neural network with Java and then deployed it to the cloud. She ran 7.6 million trials on it and it successfully detects 99.11% of malignant breast tumors. It could replace a procedure called Fine Needle Aspirate as the least invasive form of biopsy.
“I taught the computer how to diagnose breast cancer,” Brittany Wenger, the Lakewood Ranch resident, told today. “And this is really important because currently the least invasive form of biopsy is actually the least conclusive, so a lot of doctors can’t use them.”
Brittany Wenger aims now to deploy her programm in hospitals. She also wants to extend it to other types of cancer.
As the grand prize winner at the Google Science Fair Brittany Wegner has won $50,000 in scholarship money, an internship with a fair sponsor and a 10-day trip to the Galapagos islands.
Image source: http://citizenminute.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/techzing.ingoogle-science-fair-2012-290×160.jpg http://mattovermatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/brittany-wegner-artificial-brain.jpeg http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/projects/gsf83.html
