How AI-enhanced imaging technology helps better detect and treat breast cancer

Researchers from the University of Waterloo recently developed an AI-optimized imaging technology that makes breast cancer cells glow light green in MRIs, making them easier to spot.

Amy Tai, a computer science PhD student, is part of the research team. She says the technology, originally used to improve prostate cancer detection, will not only improve breast cancer detection but also help determine the best treatment plans for patients.

Tai joined CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris to share more on their new imaging technology.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

CRAIG NORRIS: Explain this process — it's the correlated diffusion imaging, correct?

AMY TAI: That's correct, yes.

NORRIS: How does it detect cancerous tissue?

TAI: It's a new form of MRI. MRI is basically a test that uses strong magnets and radio waves to take detailed pictures of the inside of your body.  And it's really popular because it doesn't use radiation like X-rays and CT scans.

Now to get into the details of it, the way that synthetic correlated diffusion imaging, or CDIs for short, works is that it uses AI. It's specifically optimized using AI to make the tissues more differentiated with each other.

If we think about, for example, density, like breast tissue has different layers of density. If you think about when you go to a grocery store, some aisles are more packed, some aisles have less people. 

So in healthy tissue, the aisles are more free, water can roam around them more freely. But in cancerous tissue, the cells actually grow more densely, and they grow more irregularly, right? Because in those regions, there's a lot more cells. They're growing very fast. So if you think about grocery store, there's a lot more people there. So it's hard for the water to go through. 

Our technology leverages that difference to kind of really differentiate what the cancerous tissue looks like versus the healthy tissue. 

NORRIS: So, it automatically senses, 'Oh, something's not right here.'

TAI: Exactly, yeah.