The use of artificial intelligence in breast cancer screening is safe and can almost halve the workload of radiologists, according to the world’s most comprehensive trial of its kind.

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer globally, according to the World Health Organization, with more than 2.3 million women developing the disease every year.

Screening can improve prognosis and reduce mortality by spotting breast cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage.

Preliminary results from a large study suggest AI screening is as good as two radiologists working together, does not increase false positives and almost halves the workload.

The interim safety analysis results of the first randomised controlled trial of its kind involving more than 80,000 women were published in the Lancet Oncology journal.

Previous studies examining whether AI can accurately diagnose breast cancer in mammograms were carried out retrospectively, assessing scans that had been looked at by clinicians. But the latest study, which followed women from Sweden with an average age of 54, compared AI-supported screening directly with standard care.

Half of the scans were assessed by two radiologists, while the other half were assessed by AI-supported screening followed by interpretation by one or two radiologists.

In total, 244 women (28%) recalled from AI-supported screening were found to have cancer compared with 203 women (25%) recalled from standard screening.

This resulted in 41 more cancers being detected with the support of AI, of which 19 were invasive and 22 were in situ cancers. 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 groups. There were 36,886 fewer screen readings by radiologists in the AI group compared with the group receiving standard care, resulting in a 44% reduction in the screen-reading workload of radiologists, the authors said.

The final results, looking at whether AI can reduce the number of interval cancers – cases detected between screenings that generally have a poorer prognosis – and whether the use of AI in screening is justified, are not expected for several years.

But the interim analysis concludes: “AI-supported mammography screening resulted in a similar cancer detection rate compared with standard double reading, with a substantially lower screen-reading workload, indicating that the use of AI in mammography screening is safe.”

Read more via The Guardian