“Improving the detection of malignant lesions in early stages” and being able to examine a greater number of tests “in less time” is the dual objective of Pilot project to improve the diagnosis of breast cancer through artificial intelligence (AI), initiated in the health area of A Coruña and Cee by the Galician Health Service (Sergas). The forecast, as it was advanced The president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, just a month ago, is to reduce by up to a third the lesions that can go unnoticed in a conventional reading of mammograms. To achieve this, the radiologists of the The A Coruña University Hospital Complex (Chuac) will have AI software that will allow them to make a more precise reading of the tests analyzed.
The pilot project, with a budget of 35,000 euros and a duration of four months, It will be carried out in all the Radiological Analysis units of Sergas, starting with Radiological Unit 3 in A Coruña, as it is “the one that performs the most breast X-rays,” Rueda specified.
Within the framework of this initiative, A minimum of 35,000 mammography studies will be performed using AI-based software to support radiologists in reading 3D mammograms. During the four months of the pilot project, a certain number of radiological studies of users of the Galician Breast Cancer Early Detection Programme will be evaluated with AI, together with the independent double radiological reading. The results will be compared with those obtained for a similar period in a recent previous year in which only the double reading was done.
“If it is satisfactory,” the Galician president anticipated, The aim of the Xunta is to extend the “use of this tool” in the Radiology units of the entire Sergas.
“AI is helping a lot in population screening for breast cancer,” highlighted Joaquín Mosquera Osés, radiologist and head of the Breast Unit at Chuac, in an interview published in this newspaper in October of last year, within the framework of World Breast Cancer Day, which is commemorated every 19th of that month. Dr. Mosquera Osés claimed, then, that “more and more advances are being incorporated into population screening for cancer” such as breast cancer, such as AI or “new techniques within mammography itself, such as tomosynthesis” which, he anticipated, “will surely be introduced in a short period of time as well.”
“And there is another challenge, which is to move towards a slightly more personalized screening,” said the radiologist and head of the Chuac Breast Unit, located at the Abente y Lago Hospital. “I am not referring to women who are at high risk (who no longer have to go to a screening programme, but to breast units), but within the population included, sometimes a bit of selection will have to be made: women who will require a shorter mammographic interval, others in whom it can be spaced out more… All of this is being studied and assessed and I believe that, in the coming years, it will also be incorporated,” she added.
