AI Usage in Breast Cancer Detection
The usage of AI is increasing. It has become the center of a boom in Silicon Valley recently because of the release of chatbots. Recent development has shown how AI can be used to communicate like humans but with worrying results sometimes.
The breast cancer screening technology was built in a similar technology used by chatbots modeled on the human brain. It only shows that AI is increasingly integrated into our everyday lives.
How Does It Detect Cancer?
According to the report:
“From the millions of cases the system is fed, the technology creates a mathematical representation of normal mammograms and those with cancers. With the ability to look at each image in a more granular way than the human eye, it then compares that baseline to find abnormalities in each mammogram.”
The use of this technology is still facing hurdles. It still requires additional clinical trials before the systems can be more widely adopted as a third reader of breast cancer screens. It means that whatever the doctor has missed, AI can see it.
It must also show how it can produce accurate results on women regardless of age, ethnicity, and body type. Plus, it must also prove it can recognize complex types of breast cancer, thereby, reducing false positive results that are not actually cancerous.
One of the largest adopters of this technology is Hungary. Since 2021, the country has 5 hospitals that perform thousands of breast cancer screening years using AI programs.
The success of this technology has inspired doctors in many other countries, like Finland, Scotland, and England. In this study about the technology’s ability to identify breast cancer in more than 200,000 scans, it was found to be as effective or more effective than a human radiologist. It can also read scans quicker than a radiologist.
According to the study, incorporating this kind of technology into this field could lower the workload of doctors. Doctors can use it to provide them with a second opinion quickly and accurately.
But this kind of program has been in development for many years. There have been existing AI technologies that can perform complex tasks. Google, for instance, created programs that outperformed doctors.
Some doctors think that AI systems could prevent human error as a result of fatigue. Many doctors are experiencing fatigue because of their working hours. Because of their long shifts, they might miss life-threatening cancer from a scan.
As told by the Times, one doctor said that he was shocked to know how effective the programs were, even in the most difficult cases. Many times, the AI identified signs of cancer that radiologists had missed in a scan. The program identified those signs correctly each time.
Will AI Replace Doctors?
AI programs will not replace human radiologists. As mentioned, they can be useful in helping doctors to identify forms of cancer. It can be used to complement care. For instance, instead of just having one doctor evaluate the scans, doctors can use AI to double-check anything they might have missed.
The AI tools may help doctors identify some signs of cancer. But many experts said that patients will only trust it if it is used in partnership with trained doctors. However, it can still be lifesaving.
