HANGZHOU, April 18 (Xinhua) -- A group of Chinese scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that doubles the detection rate for early-stage esophageal cancer.

Esophageal cancer is often asymptomatic, but experienced clinicians can detect tumors and precancerous lesions with endoscopies. The five-year survival rate is over 90 percent when the tumor is treated during the early stages while the clinical outcomes decline sharply once patients start experiencing symptoms.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, described an architecture driven by deep learning algorithms, which are trained via datasets of more than 190,000 esophageal images gathered from several clinics in China.

The clinical trial, run by researchers from Taizhou Hospital in Zhejiang Province and Wuhan University's Renmin Hospital, recruited more than 3,000 participants who underwent endoscopies. The AI system was used on half the volunteers.