(NewsNation) — A new study published Tuesday in Radiology, a peer-reviewed journal, shows artificial intelligence could be used to help predict breast cancer risks.
The study found AI algorithms performed better than a traditional Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) clinical risk model for predicting the five-year risk for breast cancer.
Risk models like BCSC uses self-reported information on the patient, including age, family history of the disease, whether she has given birth and whether she has dense breasts to calculate a risk score.
“Clinical risk models depend on gathering information from different sources, which isn’t always available or collected,” lead researcher Dr. Vignesh A. Arasu, M.D., Ph.D. said in a news release. “Recent advances in AI deep learning provide us with the ability to extract hundreds to thousands of additional mammographic features.”
Over 324,009 women were initially screened in 2016, but a random sub-cohort of 13,628 women were selected and analyzed. 193 of them had incident cancer. All women were followed until 2021.
“We selected from the entire year of screening mammograms performed in 2016, so our study population is representative of communities in Northern California,” Arasu said.