AI improves precision in breast cancer diagnosis

2021 08 18 23 12 2135 Computer Ai Artificial Illustration 400

Swedish researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that improves the diagnosis of breast cancer tumors and the ability to predict the risk of recurrence, according to a study published September 29 in Annals of Oncology.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet trained the AI model to recognize characteristics of high-resolution microscopic images from patients classified with grade 1-3 tumors. The study is based on an extensive microscopic image bank of 2,800 tumors.

"One big advantage of the method is that it's cost-effective and fast, since it's based on microscope images of dyed tissue samples, which is already part of hospital procedure," Dr. Johan Hartman, PhD, of Karolinska University Hospital, said in a news release.

Every year, around 2 million women globally develop breast cancer. To diagnose the disease, biopsies are taken and graded by a pathologist by risk as low (grade 1), medium (grade 2), or high (grade 3). Molecular diagnostic methods are more accurate and less invasive, but are often costly and time-consuming, according to the study authors.

In this study, Hartman and colleagues showed that the AI-based method can further divide patients with grade 2 tumors into two subgroups, one high-risk and one low-risk.

The method is not yet ready for clinical application, but a product is under development by a startup company called Stratipath, which is supported by KI Innovations. The researchers will now be further evaluating the method with the aim to have a product out on the market by 2022.

Page 1 of 12
Next Page