MIT Develops AI Model That Can Predict Breast Cancer

There is the saying that claims that prevention is better than cure. Basically, the idea is that if you can prevent something from happening to you, it would be better than trying to fix it. This is especially true when it comes to our health, where there might be certain instances in which a cure won’t always return you back to the way you were before.

This is why we’re starting to see how more researchers are exploring the use of AI in the medical field, where through the use of AI, it will be able to detect things that humans might otherwise miss, and be able to predict certain ailments before it is too late. Recently, researchers at MIT have developed such an AI model which they plan to use to help predict breast cancer in patients.

This will rely on the scan of a mammogram where by applying the AI to it, it will be able to predict if the patient can develop breast cancer. This was achieved by scanning the mammograms of over 60,000 patients who were treated at Massachusetts General. They then flagged the scans of women who developed breast cancer within five years of their screening, thus giving the AI markers and signs to look for in future scans.

In addition to being able to predict breast cancer early, the use of AI could help fix racial disparity in healthcare. This is because current guidelines are based primarily on white populations, which means that it could lead to delayed detection in women of color. The use of AI has the potential to take race out of the equation.

According to Dr. Allison Kurian, “It’s particularly striking that the model performs equally as well for black and white people, which has not been the case with prior risk assessment tools. If validated and made available for widespread use, this could really improve on our current strategies to estimate risk.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Medical
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Health, Science