CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) – University of Virginia doctors are giving us a glimpse into what the future holds for artificial intelligence as it relates to pathology.

“Currently the systems that are being developed are in research labs. There are actually two areas of medicine that are going to be primarily impacted by artificial intelligence related to image interpretation and that’s radiology and pathology,” James Harrison, an associate professor of pathology at UVA, said.

For the past two years, Harrison along with others in the College of American Pathologists’ Machine Learning Workgroup have been looking into the potentials of artificial intelligence and machine-learning. He says radiology is a little ahead of pathology artificial intelligence systems.

“There are systems that are actually in use now for finding problem areas in mammograms for examples, interpreting CT scans, finding evidence of stroke,” Harrison said. “We’re going to see similar kinds of systems become available for pathology.”

Harrison says these systems for pathology have not been approved for sale yet because they’re still being developed. However, he expects to start to see them over the next several years.

“The kind of artificial intelligence that’s causing most interest now is machine-learning and that looks for patterns in the data and learns those patterns on its own and then uses those patterns from existing data to make interpretations of patterns present in new data that it’s shown,” Harrison said. “The machine-learning systems we have now can perform a task based on lots of different input data so you can take a whole image and detect patterns in that, whereas previously, we might do something similar but only with a few data elements at a time. They’re particularly good at taking large amounts of input and responding to that.”

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The University of Virginia has received state clearance for its data science school.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia last week gave final approval to the creation of UVA’s School of Data Science, eight months after the Charlottesville university received a $120 million donation for the creation for the school.

“I am delighted that the School of Data Science has cleared its final hurdle and can officially move forward,” said UVA President Jim Ryan in a statement. “I want to thank the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia for sharing our excitement in this proposal, and Phil Bourne and his team at the Data Science Institute for their hard work.”

The university announced in January plans to open a School of Data Science in what will be UVA’s first new school since 2007 and its 12th in total. The majority of the funding is coming from a $120 million donation from the Charlottesville-based Quantitative Foundation, the largest private gift in UVA history.

“This is a historic moment for the University of Virginia and for the field of data science,” said Provost Elizabeth Magill. “The school is coming online at a time when the amount of available data in the world is more than doubling every two years, and there is soaring demand for qualified data scientists who can analyze and interpret vast amounts of data.”

Magill added: “A new school will catalyze research on daunting societal challenges and point the way toward their solutions. It will also allow us to prepare students to become responsible and creative leaders who are capable of using data science in a wide range of fields.”

Data Science Institute Director Philip E. Bourne has been appointed dean of the school.

UVA said in January that it plans for the new school to have a Ph.D. program, undergraduate programs in data science and data science certificates. The university also plans to expand its existing on-campus and online master’s program in data science.

“We envision the new School of Data Science at UVA as a ‘school without walls,’” Bourne said. “In its very structure and foundation, we will build collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities through partnerships and physical spaces for shared research and education programs. The new school will combine a focus on research, education and service to build bridges across academic, geographic, commercial and cultural boundaries using responsible, open data science.”

The university will celebrate the official launch of the school at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the Dell 1 building on Central Grounds.

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