An Israeli startup says it has taught an algorithm how to detect breast cancer

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, in his role as President of the Royal Marsden NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust, watches as lead surgeon Pardeep Kumar, performs surgery for the removal of a bladder tumour on a male patient during a visit to the Royal Marsden Hospital on November 07, 2013 in Sutton, Greater London. Founded in 2014 and backed by the likes of Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff with 20 million ( 16 million), the Tel Aviv-based company says it has taught an algorithm to identify early signs of breast cancer with the help of thousands of previous mammograms. That constantly improving algorithm - trained using a technique known as machine learning, which is a type of AI that equips computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed - is now better than radiologists using the best Computer Aided Detection (CAD) methods for mammography, the company claims. Eldad Elnekave, Zebra's chief medical officer, told Business Insider in Tel Aviv that the algorithm can detect half of the breast cancer cases that are currently being missed by radiologists. Radiologists working for the NHS fail to spot breast cancer in thousands of mammograms every year, according to The Telegraph.