USF professor and son team up to integrate artificial intelligence into cancer research

By: Cassidy Delamarter, University Communications and Marketing

For more than three decades, USF Distinguished University Professor Dmitry Goldgof in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence research. His son, Dr. Gregory Goldgof, is a physician scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City where he serves as the director of Artificial Intelligence for Hematopathology. Trained in both computer science and medicine, Goldgof leads a translational AI laboratory developing deep learning tools to analyze diseases of the blood and bone marrow.

Their latest work, published in Science, focuses on using AI to improve the diagnosis of blood cancers, which are traditionally identified through bone marrow smears that reveal a mix of developing red and white blood cells and platelets. Pathologists must painstakingly count and classify hundreds of these cells by hand to make an accurate diagnosis.

The father-son team merged their areas of expertise to train AI models to automate much of this process, reducing the time and effort needed for diagnosis. The MSK-led research demonstrates that deep learning can quickly and accurately identify and classify cells, improving patient care and outcomes.

"This is the kind of problem where computer vision and medicine come together," Dmitry Goldgof said. "It's exciting to see how my expertise in algorithms and AI can complement Gregory's clinical focus."

For Gregory Goldgof, collaborating with his father was always part of the plan. "I chose to focus on medical image analysis partly because it gave me an opportunity to work with him," he said. "We share the same passion, but my work is centered on developing clinical products for patients, while his is focused on the science of the algorithms. Together, that creates something stronger."

The collaboration began informally during the pandemic. Since starting his own lab at MSK, Gregory has invited his father to join his lab's virtual meetings to help advise his students and post-doctoral researchers on multiple projects.

For Dmitry, who has spent 35 years at USF helping build its reputation in AI research, seeing his son carry the work into the clinic is deeply meaningful. "To be able to work together, it's very special."

The next step is to deploy this technology at MSK, a global leader in the treatment and research of blood cancers. There, it will advance the institution's precision oncology efforts by integrating cutting-edge computer vision directly into patient care and blood cancer research.