With countries suffering from a shortage of radiologists, there are hopes AI could make analysing routine scans quicker and more accurate.
While increasingly convincing chatbots such as ChatGPT have driven speculation about the future potential applications of AI, one area in which the technology has already shown proficiency is in reading medical scans. Regular screening is, therefore, vital to identifying early signs of cancer. In Europe, women aged 50 to 69 are advised to get a mammogram every two years, with the resulting scan analysed by two radiologists.The Swedish study involved scans of 80,000 women who had mammograms at four sites in southwest Sweden between April 2021 and July last year.
The AI-supported system spotted 20% more cancers, the study said, which worked out to be an additional case for every thousand women screened. “The greatest potential of AI right now is that it could allow radiologists to be less burdened by the excessive amount of reading,” said Kristina Lang, a radiologist at Sweden’s Lund University and lead author of the study.