Giving Compass' Take:

• A new study finds that an artificial intelligence (AI) tool can identify breast cancer with approximately 90% accuracy when combined with radiologist analysis.

• Why is it important to allow this technology to assist, not replace, doctors? How is technology helping progress modern medicine? 

• Check out this guide for donors to read and learn more about cancer research.


The study examined the ability of a type of artificial intelligence (AI), a machine learning computer program, to add value to the diagnoses a group of 14 radiologists reached as they reviewed 720 mammogram images.

“THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF OUR WORK IS TO AUGMENT, NOT REPLACE, HUMAN RADIOLOGISTS.”

“Our study found that AI identified cancer-related patterns in the data that radiologists could not, and vice versa,” says senior study author Krzysztof Geras, assistant professor in the radiology department at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.

“AI detected pixel-level changes in tissue invisible to the human eye, while humans used forms of reasoning not available to AI,” adds Geras, also an affiliated faculty member at the Center for Data Science. “The ultimate goal of our work is to augment, not replace, human radiologists.”

In 2014, women (without symptoms) in the United States got more than 39 million mammography exams to screen for breast cancer and determine the need for closer follow-up. Women whose test results yield abnormal mammography findings are referred for biopsy, a procedure that removes a small sample of breast tissue for laboratory testing.

Read the full article about using AI to detect breast cancer by Greg Williams at Futurity.