Singapore, Feb. 7 -- A group of researchers, led by Assoc Prof Ng Yin Kwee from NTU's School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), has developed a computer programme to identify potential tumours in the human breast, making use of the observation that malignant breast tumours distribute heat differently to healthy breast tissue.

The computer programme, Physics-informed Neural Network (PINN), was developed in collaboration with medical doctors and researchers from Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore General hospital, and Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, and combines artificial intelligence (AI) and heat-imaging technology.

PINN takes thermal infrared images of a breast and analyses the heat patterns within the tissue, flagging...