VProject: creating an AI and simulation system for the study of complex diseases and applying it to lung cancer

Abstract

Complex diseases like cancer are one of the most serious sources of suffering and death. Their multifactorial nature and multiscale effects compromise the patient’s health and life, so there is a need for new tools for clinicians to navigate through the intricate search space associated with their treatment. In this context, the present project focuses on the creation of a computational platform to optimise the treatment of complex diseases using AI and simulations. Specifically, the system is applied to study the combination

of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy in 4 real patients: 3 cases of non- small cell lung cancer (2 adenocarcinomas and 1 squamous cell carcinoma), and 1 case of

small cell lung cancer. The prototype takes as input biomedical images directly from the

hospital equipment and converts them into a 3D tissue-labelled point cloud that approx- imates the state of the disease at the beginning and the end of the treatment. Then, it

takes quasi-natural language instructions to generate customisable dynamic models of the

patient’s disease and treatment, combining methods like cellular automata and diffusion- reaction. These models can be visualised and used to run controlled simulations with the

prototype’s graphic interface. Furthermore, the system can automatically parameterise them to replicate the behaviour of the disease and treatment using a genetic algorithm.

Finally, the platform can also take instructions to generate customisable Deep Reinforce- ment Learning agents that interact with the patient-specific simulations to search for

policies that improve their outcomes, so that this knowledge can be used to help future patients.