An artificial intelligence program has demonstrated a higher adenoma detection rate than human gastroenterologists in a world-first, double-blinded randomised controlled trial.

The program, called EndoScreener, runs in real-time during a colonoscopy and sounds an alert when it detects a polyp. It was previously tested in a non-blinded trial.

But Chinese researchers have now completed what they claim is a world-first double-blinded trial of 962 patients, half of whom were allocated to a sham artificial intelligence (AI) — a reprogrammed version of EndoScreener with a sensitivity of almost zero for easy-to-miss polyps.

The results, published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, showed the proportion of patients undergoing colonoscopy in the true AI arm had an adenoma detection rate of 34%, compared with 28% in the sham arm.