AI proven to safely improve breast cancer detection accuracy, study finds
Global News
The study found that AI-supported mammograms were able to safely cut doctor mammogram screen-reading workload by half.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a safe and efficient tool for breast cancer detection and boosting the accuracy of diagnoses, a new early-stage study in The Lancet Oncology has found.
The AI in the study was able to cut doctor mammogram screen-reading workload almost in half, by 44.3 per cent.
The study, published Tuesday, does not argue in favour of AI as a replacement for radiologists, but rather for its ability to improve screen-reading speed and accuracy in a safe manner.
While other studies have shown promising results for the use of AI to improve mammography screening accuracy, this study is thought to be the first randomized trial, which randomly assigns participants to an experimental group or control group.
Researchers scanned over 80,000 women aged 40 to 80 years old at four screening sites in Sweden between April 2021 and July 2022.
The women were assigned to either an intervention group, whose mammograms were read by radiologists with the support of AI, or a control group, where mammograms were read by two radiologists without the use of AI.
Cancer was detected at a rate of 6.1 per 1,000 screened participants for the intervention group whose scan readings were supported by AI — or 244 out of a total of 39,996 screen readings.
