Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, November 29 (Xinhua)-- Google announced today that it has licensed its artificial intelligence research model for breast cancer screening to medical technology company iCAD. This is the first time Google has licensed the technology, hoping to eventually lead to more accurate breast cancer detection and risk assessment.

The two companies aim to deploy the technology in a real-world clinical environment by 2024, however, commercial deployment still depends on the success of research and testing.

The partnership builds on Google's previous work to improve breast cancer detection. Back in 2020, Google researchers published a paper in the journal Nature and found that its artificial intelligence system outperformed several radiologists in identifying signs of breast cancer. In thousands of mammograms studied, the model reduced the false negative rate by 9.4% and the false positive rate by 5.7%.

CTOnews.com learned that iCAD plans to incorporate Google's mammography AI research model into iCAD's existing tools. The first is its "ProFound AI" tool, which analyzes images from digital breast tomography (DBT), an advanced imaging technique sometimes referred to as "3D mammography". The tool scans DBT images for malignant soft tissue density and calcification. ICAD also plans to use Google's model for its risk assessment tool, which the company says provides personalized breast cancer risk assessment for everyone.

It is hoped that artificial intelligence may become a tool to help radiologists and their patients. Generally speaking, medical experts are more cautious about artificial intelligence. In Google's 2020 study, there were cases in which radiologists found cancers that were not initially seen in the model. In addition, there is no exact gold standard for cancer diagnosis, which may make it difficult to establish a good baseline when training algorithms. As a result, this artificial intelligence tool may be improved by providing more than two options to take into account the "grey area of diagnosis" rather than clinging to binary results-"cancer" or "cancer-free". Over-reliance on artificial intelligence without hiring a doctor to assess all the nuances of a patient's health, especially when it comes to trying to detect early cancer, may increase the risk of overdiagnosis.

Separately, Google said it was working with the National Health Service (NHS) and Imperial College London to see if its artificial intelligence technology could play a role as a "second independent observer" in double-reading mammograms, allowing radiologists to focus on high-priority cases while improving the consistency and quality of the tests.

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