Cancer or not? Let's ask that pigeon

• Autores: Sam Wong
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3048, 2015, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Job opportunities for pigeons have been few and far between since electronic communication made their skills as messengers obsolete. But now it seems they could be put to work analyzing medical images. So says the team who trained pigeons to distinguish between healthy and cancerous breast tissue. Richard Levenson at the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues showed pigeons microscope images of breast tissue. Then they rewarded them when they correctly pecked a colored button that corresponded to either cancerous or healthy tissue. After 15 daily sessions, each lasting an hour, the pigeons got the right answer 85 per cent of the time.