Doctors using AI catch breast cancer more often than either does alone

Vara is a startup based in Germany that leads the study. Over a fourth of Germany's breast cancer screening centers are already using the company's artificial intelligence.

Two approaches were tested by the Vara team with help from the Essen University Hospital in Germany. The artificial intelligence works alone to analyze mammograms. The artificial intelligence distinguishes between scans it thinks look normal and ones it thinks are worrisome. The latter is referred to a radiologist, who will look at them before seeing the assessment from the artificial intelligence. If the doctor didn't detect cancer, the artificial intelligence would warn.

To learn how to place mammograms into one of three buckets, Vara fed the data from over 367,000 mammograms. The conclusions from both approaches were compared with the decisions real radiologists made on mammograms from screening centers that didn't contribute scans used to train the artificial intelligence

The second approach was 3.6% better at detecting breast cancer than a doctor alone. More than half of all mammograms were classified as confidently normal by it. The streamlining could cut down on the workload.

After breast cancer screenings, patients with normal scans are sent to the hospital for follow-up testing. One in eight mammograms are missed. As they view thousands of scans, fatigue, overwork, and even the time of day all affect how well a radiologist can identify a tumor. Density of breast tissue found in younger patients makes it harder to see signs of cancer.

German law requires radiologists to look at every mammogram, at least glancing at the calls they make. The artificial intelligence still gives them a hand by pre- filling reports on scans that are labeled normal.

Tllner has been using the program for two years. He sometimes disagrees with the artificial intelligence that classified scans as confident normal and filled out reports to reflect a different conclusion, but he insists that normals are almost always normal. You just have to enter.

After the doctor has offered an initial, independent assessment of the mammogram, it's referred to a radiologist.