The latest results from the landmark MASAI study of AI for mammography screening show a favorable trend toward reducing the rate of interval cancers, or breast cancers that appear between screening rounds. The new findings – published Friday in The Lancet – also confirm mammography AI’s sharp workload reduction and trend toward higher sensitivity.
MASAI is a large randomized controlled trial conducted in Sweden that examined the impact of ScreenPoint Medical’s Transpara AI algorithm on breast screening.
- It’s an important issue, because mammography is one of the radiology segments where AI can provide the most help by reducing radiologist workload while improving cancer detection.
Previous MASAI studies demonstrated that AI can reduce radiologist workload by 44% and improve cancer detection rates by 28%.
- The findings suggest that AI could eliminate the need for double-reading of most mammograms, a practice that’s common in European screening programs.
The new findings focus specifically on interval cancers, cancers that are missed in one screening round, only to be found later.
- Like other MASAI studies, the patient population consisted of 106k women screened with mammography and Transpara AI in Sweden’s national program in 2021 and 2022.
Results indicated that AI-aided mammography…
- Cut interval cancer rates by 12% per 1k women (1.55 vs. 1.76).
- Reduced invasive interval cancers by 16% (75 vs. 89) with 27% fewer cancers of aggressive subtypes (43 vs. 59).
- Detected 9% more cancers at screening (81% vs. 74%) with comparable specificity (99% for both) and recall rates (1.5% vs. 1.4%).
The researchers acknowledged that the study was not powered to show a statistically significant difference in the interval cancer rate.
- But its positive trend indicates that AI can be used to replace double-reading without negative consequences for patients – resulting in a sharp workload reduction for radiologists.
The Takeaway
Results from the MASAI study on mammography AI just keep on getting better. Last week’s findings indicate that there’s really no reason for European breast screening programs to not dive in and replace their second readers with AI for the majority of exams.
