Radiologist, AI combination improves breast cancer detection

Editor's Note

An artificial intelligence (AI) model was able to detect breast cancer with nearly 90% accuracy when combined with analysis from radiologists, the October 18 Health IT Analytics reports.

Researchers from New York University Schools of Medicine and Data Science developed the model to first consider small patches of a full resolution image separately to create a heat map. The model then looks at the entire breast for structural factors linked to cancer and focuses on the areas flagged in the heat map.

The AI model detected pixel-level changes in tissue invisible to the human eye, and radiologists used forms of reasoning not available to AI.

The researchers plan to train the model on more data to increase its accuracy and to eventually have it identify changes in breast tissue that are not yet cancerous but have the potential to be.