Using artificial intelligence (AI) to supplement radiologists’ evaluations of mammograms may improve breast-cancer screening by reducing false positives without missing cases of cancer, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Whiterabbit.ai, a Silicon Valley-based technology startup. The researchers developed an algorithm that identified normal mammograms with very high sensitivity. They then ran a simulation on patient data to see what would have happened if all of the very low-risk mammograms had been taken off radiologists’ plates, freeing the doctors to concentrate on the more questionable scans. The simulation revealed that fewer people would have been called back for additional testing but that the same number of cancer cases would have been detected.
“False positives are when you call a patient back for additional testing, and it turns out to be benign,” explained senior author Richard L. Wahl, MD, a professor of radiology at Washington University’s Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) and a professor of radiation oncology. “That causes a lot of unnecessary anxiety for patients and consumes medical resources. This simulation study showed that very low-risk mammograms can be reliably identified by AI to reduce false positives and improve workflows.” The study is published April 10 in the journal Radiology: Artificial Intelligence.