Google AI system can surpass human experts in spotting breast cancer, study finds

Google's artificial intelligence system can identify breast cancer more accurately than radiologists, according to a study published in Nature on Wednesday. The model, created in collaboration with cancer researchers and Google Health, was trained on X-ray images, known as digital mammography, from women in the U.K. and U.S. to spot signs of breast cancer in the scans. Researchers used mammograms from 76,000 women in the U.K. and more than 15,000 women in the U.S., according to Google Health. Shravya Shetty, technical lead at Google Health who co-authored the study, said the results "exceeded expectations" and revealed possibilities that the AI could assist in workload reduction by being employed as a second reader with breast cancer screenings. Researchers noted that the model received less information than human experts, only processing the most recent of an anonymized mammogram.