Dr. John Melnick, Director of RadNet’s Prostate Program in the East, explains what drew him to prostate imaging, from a background in art, philosophy and medicine to training early in his career with leaders in prostate imaging research. He describes how AI now supports his daily work as a second set of eyes, never a replacement for the radiologist, and why his goal is to take the fear out of screening and help patients find answers earlier.
Transcript
0:00 I originally was interested in art and philosophy, history, and I came to medicine as a way of interacting with people that felt sincere.
0:13 And once in medical school, what attracted me was images.
0:20 The idea that images can lead you to helping people and improving people’s lives, making people feel more comfortable, is the core reason of me entering into radiology.
0:34 Early in my career, I had the opportunity to study with some of the leaders in the research of prostate imaging, developing new techniques to find cancer early.
0:45 I got to be engaged in the very early application of these tools. It’s really fun to be doing something that people really haven’t done before.
0:56 And being part of innovation is, again, it goes back to the core values of why I went into medicine in the first place, to help people.
1:06 The evolution of AI in my practice has almost provided a friend sitting next to me.
1:15 The AI is not as good as I am, but I am not always as good as I am. The AI is an amazing tool to give a second set of eyes to the material that’s being presented to me.
1:30 It’s almost a conversation that I have with the AI results. As AI gets better, my conversation improves.
1:39 It makes me better radiologist. It makes it more efficient to move through the cases. It enhances my experience as radiologist in every aspect of my job.
1:47 The tragedy I’m trying to prevent is having somebody have a disease, a lesion, tumor, really anything.
1:59 A disease that’s preventable. The idea that there are treatments and cures to something that can cause suffering. One person’s suffering is never rarely a single event. It’s a tip of the iceberg.
2:16 So whatever I can do to make people live better lives, make families happier, make a society more comfortable, that’s what it’s all about.
2:29 I enjoy helping people at that level as a consult service. I enjoy my own interactions with images. I enjoy peeling through data sets. I slowly start stacking up the pieces until I have a complete individual sitting in front of me.
2:46 I think that taking some of the fear out of it is important. And it’s our greatest challenge as physicians to take some of the fear out of it. It’s overcoming that fear that is the hardest part.
2:59 Early detection leads to an easy early treatment.
3:04 I really do feel like we are on a mission. It’s not a job. It is a mission.