https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66382168
Artificial intelligence can "safely" read breast cancer screening images, a Swedish study suggests.Researchers led by a team at Lund University found computer-aided detection could spot cancer at a "similar rate" to two radiologists.But they said more research was needed to fully determine whether it could be used in screening programmes.Experts in the UK agreed AI offered huge promise in breast cancer screening.This is not the first study to look at the use of AI to diagnose breast cancer in mammograms - X-rays of the breast.Previous research, including some carried out in the UK, has looked retrospectively, where the technology assesses scans which have already been looked at by doctors.But this research study saw AI-supported screening put head-to-head with standard care.The trial, published in Lancet Oncology, involved more than 80,000 women from Sweden with an average age of 54.Half of the scans were assessed by two radiologists, known as standard care, while the other half were assessed by the AI-supported screening tool followed by interpretation by one or two radiologists.In total, 244 women from AI-supported screening were found to have cancer, compared with 203 women recalled from standard screening.And the use of AI did not generate more "false positives" - where a scan is incorrectly diagnosed as abnormal.The false-positive rate was 1.5% in both the AI group and the group assessed by radiologists.