Pigeons as Cancer Detectors?

Pigeons have an amazing sense of visual recall.  Dr. Richard Levenson, a professor and vice chair for strategic technologies in the department of medical pathology and laboratory medicine at University of California-Davis Medical Center, was interested in seeing if this ability could be utilized in pathology.  More specifically, he wanted to see if pigeons could detect cancer in tissue samples.  The conducted experiment included the assistance of Dr. Ed Wasserman, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Iowa, and he noted “that the pigeons responded to this visual challenge as well, or better than many other tests.”  In this experiment, eight pigeons were placed in a high-tech box that contained a magnified image that a scientist would see underneath a microscope.  This magnified image displayed cancer cells and non-cancerous cells, from real-life breast tissue samples.  After being exposed to the image for a few seconds, two boxes would appear on either of the image: one yellow and one blue.  The birds were trained to peck at only one box, depending on if the sample was malignant or benign.  There were 144 images at varying magnification levels that the birds were exposed to, and the birds got a pellet for each correct answer.  This training period/experimental session lasted for 15 days, and the pigeons showed great success - choosing the correct answer 85-90% of the time.  Dr. Levenson and his colleagues think that pigeons may one day be used in the same way that computer algorithms are used today in this field of medical diagnostic technology.  They could act as substitutes for expensive human testers in the early stages of cancer development.  Also, these researchers wonder if pigeons could be used to bolster training programs for humans.  For example, textbook authors could choose which images seem tricky enough to pose greater challenges to the human trainees based on pigeon responses to the same images.  The future of pigeons and pathology is worth keeping an eye out for.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/19/health/pigeons-as-cancer-detectors/index.html