A new tool to help name brain tumors during surgery
Original title: Sturgeon V2: a clinically applicable CNS tumor classifier trained on relabeled data
How far along is this research?
This is a preprint. Other scientists have not checked it yet, so treat it as an early signal rather than an answer.
It was tested on past patient cases, and it is not part of standard care yet.
The short version
A new computer tool named child brain tumors correctly more often than the older version.
What was studied. Researchers built a new version of a tool called Sturgeon that reads DNA marks in a tumor sample. They trained it on nearly 10,000 DNA profiles, then tested it on 94 past child surgery cases.
What they found. In the 94 past child cases, the tool was confidently correct in 85 cases. The older version was confidently correct in 78. The new tool made one confident wrong call. In 1880 practice runs, wrong answers among confident calls dropped from 7.1% to 2.8%.
What this means, and what it doesn't
What it could mean: During surgery, doctors sometimes need a fast answer about the type of tumor. A tool like this may give that answer more often, and be wrong less often. The team says it is openly available and can run on a local computer.
What it doesn't mean: This is not a treatment and it is not a cure. The tool only helps name a tumor. It does not shrink one. The tests looked back at cases that already happened, so this is not proof from a planned trial. It is not standard care yet, and your own team may not have it. Even a better tool can still be wrong. It was wrong in one case here.
Source: medRxiv (preprint), October 21, 2026 · Read the original
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