Turkish scientists create voice-based app for early lung cancer detection

Turkish scientists have developed an artificial intelligence-supported application designed to detect lung cancer at an early stage by analyzing a person's voice.

Led by Dr. Haydar Ankışhan from the Stem Cell Institute at Ankara University, with contributions from scientists across multiple disciplines, the project targets early diagnosis of lung cancer, which is often identified only in its advanced stages.

Speaking to reporters, Ankışhan said: "In our study, we considered the structure of the voice, the anatomical structure of the lungs, and the circulatory system and proposed that the voice can provide information about lung cancer. We pursued this idea."

"After nearly one-and-a-half years of work, we have achieved promising results," he said.

"We have found that lung cancer, particularly in its first stage, can be diagnosed at an early stage with an accuracy rate of over 90%," he said.

Dr. Bülent Mustafa Yenigün, who teaches at Ankara University's School of Medicine and is part of the research team, stressed that the most critical factor in treating lung cancer is early detection.

"We did our study with a group consisting of 50 patients and 50 healthy individuals," he said.

"A two-minute speaking script was prepared for each patient for voice analysis, and their voices were recorded," he said.

Underlining that all the recordings were made and analyzed under identical conditions, he said: "Our application detects changes in the voice and issues a warning that there may be pathological lung cancer."