A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool can accurately spot cancer and doctors believe will speed up diagnosis of the disease.
The device uses algorithms which are understood to perform more effectively than current methods.
A new study shows the AI can identify whether abnormal growths found on CT scans are cancerous.
Now, experts believe the development could fast-track patients into potentially life-saving treatment.
The tool has been designed by experts at the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust, the Institute of Cancer Research in London, and Imperial College London which, together, used CT scans of about 500 patients with large lung nodules.
Dr Benjamin Hunter, a clinical oncology registrar at the Royal Marsden, said: "In the future, we hope it will improve early detection and potentially make cancer treatment more successful by highlighting high-risk patients and fast-tracking them to earlier intervention."
Cancer causes around 10 million deaths per year - nearly one in six deaths across the globe - according to the World Health Organisation.
In the study, the scans were used to create an AI algorithm, a technique which can extract important information from medical images not easily spotted by the human eye.
The model was then tested to determine if it could accurately identify cancerous nodules.
The study used a measure called area under the curve (AUC) to see how effective the model was at anticipating cancer.
According to The Guardian, An AUC of 1 indicates a perfect model, while 0.5 would be expected if the model was randomly guessing.
The results showed the AI model could spot each nodule's risk of cancer with an AUC of 0.87. The performance improved on the Brock score, a test used in clinic, which scored 0.67.
Dr Richard Lee, the Libra study's chief investigator, said: "Through this work, we hope to push boundaries to speed up the detection of the disease using innovative technologies such as AI."
Last year, a new software tool was developed to identify aggressive cancer-type HER2-low so "targeted" treatment drugs could since be prescribed.
