GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A new study from Michigan Medicine shows artificial intelligence could be used to help doctors diagnose patients with brain cancer.

The technology is called DeepGlioma.

Currently, there are three main therapies for treating brain tumors: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

“The big challenge we were trying to address in this study was it takes some time to go from a tumor that we as surgeons have operated on to actually reaching a final diagnosis. That’s where we know with certainty what the tumor is,” said Dr. Todd Hollen, a University of Michigan neurosurgeon and inventor of DeepGlioma.

Hollen said diagnosis can take anywhere from a week to six weeks. Hollen said his team was working to find a faster way to guide what they do in the operating room.

“One of the especially difficult things about being a neurosurgeon who treats brain tumors is that in the majority of cases when we’re operating on the tumor, we don’t know with certainty what that tumor actually is,” he said.

Hollen said diagnosing disease is an area of health care that could really benefit from AI.

“The challenge of making these diagnoses is only getting more difficult, now that we know more about cancers and malignancies,” he said.