AI Models Predict Breast Cancer with Radiologist-Level Accuracy

Breast cancer is the global leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women, and the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women across the world (1). From our perspective, improved treatment options and earlier detection could have a positive impact on decreasing mortality, as this could offer more options for successful intervention and therapies when the disease is still in its early stages. Our team of IBM researchers published research in Radiology around a new AI model that can predict the development of malignant breast cancer in patients within the year, at rates comparable to human radiologists. As the first algorithm of its kind to learn and make decisions from both imaging data and a comprehensive patient's health history, our model was able to correctly predict the development of breast cancer in 87 percent of the cases it analyzed, and was also able to correctly interpret 77 percent of non-cancerous cases. Our model could one day help radiologists to confirm or deny positive breast cancer cases.