A.I. Helps Detect Breast Cancer That Doctors Might Overlook
Breast cancer is one of the most life-threatening diseases that affects mostly women of all ages, ethnicities and social backgrounds. This is why medical professionals strive to detect these types of tumours in advance in order to treat them efficiently and save the patient’s life in the early stages of the disease. However, a major concern falls into place when we look at figures showing that more than 680,000 deaths were caused by breast cancer according to the WHO (World Health Organization) in 2020. Even with advancements in detection and diagnosis, some cases still get overlooked, resulting in late treatment and worse results.
Now, advancements in Artificial Intelligence are making it possible for A.I. to help doctors detect signs of tumours that the professionals may miss. So far, this tool is showing an impressive ability to spot cancer at least as well as human radiologists. In Hungary, where artificial intelligence is being tested in different hospitals, 22 cases of cancer have been detected by A.I. when these had gone unnoticed by radiologists.
These hospitals perform 35,000 screenings a year, which is a lot and, according to The National Cancer Institute, about 20 percent of breast cancers are missed during screening mammograms. Therefore, A.I. cut down on radiologists’ workloads by at least 30%, reducing the number of X-rays they needed to read.
This A.I. software for breast cancer detection will definitely improve public health.
However, even if this technology is showing serious advancements, it still needs to improve so it can be widely adopted. Firstly, additional clinical trials are needed. A.I. must show accurate results for women of all ages, ethnicities and body types, it has to cut down false positives that are not cancerous and most importantly, recognize more complex forms of breast cancer.
Also, people are still kind of sceptical about this new technology saying that it may replace human radiologists. Nevertheless, there’s nothing to be afraid of because patients will only trust this technology if it is used in cooperation with trained professionals. So A.I. will definitely not replace doctors, each mammogram is reviewed by 2 radiologists first, and then the A.I. agrees or flags areas that they need to check again.
In addition, more countries are willing to use the same technology in hospitals. The United States, Great Britain and the European Union, for example, are testing and providing data to develop the systems to detect breast cancers in their early stage.
In short, Artificial Intelligence will help detect signs of breast cancer that radiologists may miss. If it is used in partnership with trained doctors it will revolutionise detection and diagnosis of this disease. However, it has to improve its accuracy, show precision over diverse body types and ethnicities, limit false positives and, of course, detect complex shapes of breast cancer so it can be widely adopted.