Breast Cancer: Improving Detection with A.I.

Mass General's Constance ("Connie") Lehman, MD, PhD, is chief of Breast Imaging, Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, and co-director of the Avon Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center. Below, she describes her collaboration with colleagues from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and their pioneering work developing an image-based model that predicts breast cancer up to five years in advance. Why is it important to have better breast cancer risk assessment tools? Most women diagnosed with breast cancer have no "known" risk factors other than being female. We knew if we could develop better methods to assess a woman's personal risk of breast cancer, we could redesign our screening programs, tailored to each individual woman's risk.