Artificial intelligence (AI) could become a valuable aid in the fight against breast cancer, one of the most common in women with more than two million new cases diagnosed last year worldwide. Thus, a computer program has shown better accuracy than radiologist experts in identifying breast cancers from mammography images.
The results of this experiment appeared in the scientific journal Nature . "More trials, clinical validation and regulatory approvals are needed before it can start to make a difference for patients, but we are determined to work with our partners to achieve this goal," said Dr. Dominic in a statement. King, UK manager at Google Health, and co-author of this study.
Fewer missed diagnoses
This artificial intelligence technique from Google research is based on an algorithm. The latter was trained, fed, with nearly 29,000 mammography images from Great Britain and to a lesser extent from the United States. Experts had access to the patient's history when interpreting the radiographic images, while the AI only had access to the last mammogram.
Artificial intelligence has thus reduced the proportion of cases where cancer has been wrongly detected, by 5.7% on the American images studied and by 1.2% on the British. The algorithm also lowered the percentage of missed diagnoses by 9.4% among American images and 2.7% among those from Great Britain.
AI could act as "second opinion"
In the United States, only one reading of screening images is generally performed, while in the United Kingdom, mammograms offered to women between 50 and 71 years of age are examined by two radiologists. This is also the case for screening offered in France to women aged 50 to 74.
The Google Health team also conducted experiments comparing the computer's decision with that of the first reader radiologist. If the two diagnoses matched, the case was marked as resolved. It was only in the event of discordant results that the device was then asked to compare with the decision of the second reader. The study shows that using AI to check the diagnosis of the first human reader could save up to 88% of the workload of the second radiologist. Technology may one day serve as a "second opinion" for cancer diagnoses.
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- Screening
- Artificial intelligence
- Breast cancer
- Health