Artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to identify women at risk of breast cancer several years before they are diagnosed, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health stated on Tuesday.
Five researchers from this Institute, the University of California, and the University of Washington were granted access to a commercial AI program, which retrospectively analyzed mammograms of 116,495 women who participated in the Norwegian program between 2004 and 2018.
In total, 1,607 of these women were later diagnosed with breast cancer.
The algorithm was able to identify which women had a higher risk of developing breast cancer, even indicating which breast was more at risk, four to six years before diagnosis.
“We observed that the breast that developed cancer had twice as many points in the system as the other breast,” said Solveig Hofvind, who leads the breast cancer detection program using AI.
“The study shows that algorithms already available on the market can be used to develop even more personalized detection programs,” she added, according to REL.
According to the World Health Organization, 670,000 women died from breast cancer in 2022. This is also the most common form of cancer among women.
This study has also been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), one of the most renowned medical journals in the world.
