New York: Three commercially available radiology AI systems have shown the potential to flag early signs of breast cancer up to 6 years before a diagnosis, according to a study published in Radiology, the flagship journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
In a Swedish retrospective study, researchers tested three AI-based computer-assisted detection (AI-CAD) systems on mammogram data from a large screening population. They found that cancer prediction scores issued by AI-CAD were elevated, on average, for individuals who were eventually diagnosed with breast cancer, while scores were low for those who remained cancer-free.
“Approximately 20% of breast cancer cases demonstrate mammographic signs that are already visible to AI around 6 years before diagnosis,” explained senior coauthor Fredrik Strand, M.D., Ph.D., of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. “Our study confirms the potential of AI to, in some cases, find signs of cancer in the mammograms much earlier than when radiologists detected it.”
AI-based systems have shown promise for predicting 5-year risk of breast cancer and identifying women at risk of “interval” cancers between regular screening mammograms. Dr. Strand’s team investigated AI’s potential to flag mammographic signs that were present up to 10 years in retrospect.
For the study, the researchers included a total of 88,963 mammograms performed on 31,394 patients across a period of 10 years.
