Alibaba's research arm DAMO Academy has open-sourced a medical image-language model called RADAR, according to GIGAZINE. The model is designed to read CT scans and identify roughly 150 types of abdominal diseases, cancer among them.
TNGlobal reports that DAMO unveiled the model as part of a broader set of AI tools for cancer and abdominal CT imaging. Coverage of the release also appeared in Milliyet, which described RADAR as open-sourced technology aimed at detecting cancers and other abdominal conditions.
Separately, Ynetnews reported on an AI system that detected esophageal cancer on CT scans months before diagnosis, and 1News.az reported on a Chinese AI model built for esophageal cancer screening. The source material does not state whether those systems are connected to RADAR or to Alibaba.
The release fits a pattern of Chinese technology companies publishing medical imaging models for outside researchers and developers to use. Open-sourcing gives hospitals and research groups the ability to test such a model on their own scan data rather than relying on a closed commercial product.
What to watch next: whether independent researchers or clinicians publish evaluations of RADAR's accuracy on abdominal CT scans outside the teams that built it.
