AI can increase breast cancer detection at an early stage.
This is shown by a new study from Karolinska University Hospital, which researcher Fredrik Strand now hopes will be able to save lives.
– It has really exceeded our expectations, he says.
All women over the age of 40 are called every two years for a mammogram to detect possible breast cancer.
Early detection of breast cancer reduces mortality among those diagnosed, and for more than 30 years, mammography screening has thus been an important key to reducing mortality from breast cancer.
– But unfortunately, about 30 percent of breast cancer is missed even though you go for your screening, says Fredrik Strand as a radiologist and researcher at Karolinska University Hospital.
“Exceeded our expectations”
To find more difficult-to-detect breast cancer, you can use magnetic resonance imaging. But as this is ten times more expensive than a mammogram, Fredrik Strand and his colleagues have developed an AI system that can analyze the mammogram images.
And in a new study from Karolinska University Hospital, where women who, according to the AI tool, could have missed cancer were offered another examination with an MRI, breast cancer was discovered among 36 out of roughly 500 women who had been declared healthy after the mammogram.
– We hoped that it would be a good result, that we would succeed in finding some cancer. But it has really exceeded our expectations, says Fredrik Strand.
Ten times more cases can be detected
Now Fredrik Strand hopes that the new technology will be able to reduce mortality from breast cancer.
– For one in 200 women, cancer is discovered during the mammography screening. And then you go for screening for that risk or probability, explains Fredrik Strand and continues:
– Here it is one out of 20.