New study explores AI's potential to expedite breast cancer diagnosis process

According to Northwestern Medicine, the investigational AI model is trained to quickly find the mammograms which need further review and prioritize these for the radiologist to review. Patients showing a higher likelihood of breast cancer will have the option to undergo this imaging on the same day to further evaluate for the presence of cancer, thereby reducing the amount of time that women spend waiting for a diagnostic assessment.

Google Health has collaborated with Northwestern Medicine on a new clinical research study to explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in reducing the diagnosis time for women whose mammograms show a higher likelihood of breast cancer.

"Artificial intelligence has shown great potential to improve health care outcomes; the next challenge is to demonstrate how AI can be applied in the real world. At Google Health, we're committed to working with clinicians, patients and others to harness advances in research and ultimately bring about better and more accessible care," Google wrote in a blog post.

Together with @NorthwesternMed, we're working on a clinical study to explore whether AI models can help to reduce the diagnosis time in the mammography process, which if successful, could improve breast cancer patients' experience. Learn more: https://t.co/iW16d9KyhT

— Google Health (@GoogleHealth) February 25, 2021

Study participants will have their mammogram reviewed by the AI tool that takes only a few minutes to complete and then in the standard way by a radiologist.

According to Northwestern Medicine, the investigational AI model is trained to quickly find the mammograms which need further review and prioritize these for the radiologist to review. Patients showing a higher likelihood of breast cancer will have the option to undergo this imaging on the same day to further evaluate for the presence of cancer, thereby reducing the amount of time that women spend waiting for a diagnostic assessment.

"With the use of artificial intelligence, we hope to expedite the process to diagnosis of breast cancer by identifying suspicious findings on patients' screening examinations earlier than the standard of care. Finding cancer earlier means it can be smaller and easier to treat. We hope this will ultimately save lives," said lead investigator Dr Sarah Friedewald, an associate professor of radiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The new research study builds on previous research conducted at Google Health, the UK National Health Service (NHS) and Northwestern Medicine which demonstrated the potential of AI models to analyze de-identified retrospectively collected screening mammograms with similar or better accuracy than clinicians.