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More Positive Mammo AI News, VA Cancels PACS, and Cancer Mortality
February 2, 2026
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Together with
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“This is fascinating from a patient-centered care perspective. The AI isn’t just finding more cancers; it’s finding different cancers.”
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Marcin Chwistek, MD, on new results from the MASAI study of mammography AI.
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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.
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- VA Cancels PACS Project: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has canceled a major project to upgrade its PACS technology. The Veterans Health Administration’s NextGen PACS initiative was a multi-phase project to upgrade its medical image management infrastructure, including AI orchestration, teleradiology, vendor-neutral archives, viewers, and voice recognition and reporting. Multiple imaging companies had been selected for the project, which was first announced in 2023. The VA reportedly has decided to continue with its existing PACS vendor rather than contract with new companies.
- Medicaid Expansion Reduces Breast Cancer Mortality: States that expanded Medicaid coverage after passage of the Affordable Care Act saw lower mortality among women diagnosed with breast cancer, but the benefits were uneven. In a new study in JAMA Network Open, researchers tracked 1.6M women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2006 and 2021, finding an overall 4.8% relative reduction in mortality in Medicaid expansion states. Hispanic women saw the largest reduction (-19%), as did patients with metastatic disease (-14%) and those getting immunotherapy (-24%).
- High-Deductible Health Plans and Cancer Survivors: In another related study in JAMA Network Open, researchers found that high-deductible health plans can be hazardous to the health of cancer survivors – but not people without cancer. Researchers surveyed 147.3k people from 2011 to 2018, finding that cancer survivors with high-deductible health plans had higher risk of worse overall survival (HR = 1.46), while there was no statistically significant difference in adults without cancer. High deductibles may discourage cancer patients from seeking medically necessary care, leading to worse outcomes.
- New TMIST Data Show DBT’s Edge: Digital breast tomosynthesis is the U.S. breast screening standard of care, but new TMIST data in AJR confirm its superiority even for women outside USPSTF screening guidelines. For 181 women 40-44 years old, DBT had a better cancer detection rate per 1k women compared to conventional digital mammography (15 vs. 0 cancers) and lower recall rate (12% vs. 13%). Similar data were found for 90 women 75 and older (CDR = 7.1 vs. 7.2) and recall rates (3.6% vs. 10%).
- Siemens Gets FDA Nod for Updated PET/MR: Siemens Healthineers received FDA 510(k) clearance for the second generation of its Biograph One PET/MR scanner. The new system is an update of the company’s first commercial PET/MR system, released in 2011, with faster acquisition times and more efficient workflow that reduce scan times by 50%. The new Biograph One combines a Magnetom Vida 3T MRI scanner with a Biograph Vision PET/CT with LSO crystals, producing 187-picosecond time-of-flight resolution.
- AI for Digital SPECT Noise Reduction: Spectrum Dynamics Medical got FDA clearance for Veritas.AI, an AI-based noise reduction protocol for the company’s Veriton-CT digital SPECT/CT system. Veritas.AI applies a CNN algorithm to reduce noise while preserving spatial resolution and quantitative accuracy, reducing scanning times by up to 50%. Clinical applications include bone imaging, I-123 MIBG scintigraphy, and theranostics with Lu-177 radiotracers.
- Lesion Analysis Software Cleared: Another new molecular imaging clearance came for GE HealthCare and its MIM LesionID Pro software, developed by GE’s MIM business, which it acquired in 2024. MIM LesionID Pro helps clinicians analyze PSMA PET/CT and SPECT/CT images to estimate whole-body tumor burden as a precursor for theranostics treatment with a therapeutic radiopharmaceutical. The solution uses AI automation to eliminate manual pre-processing and help clinicians quantify and longitudinally track disease changes over multiple cycles of therapy.
- ASTRO Launches Theranostics Training: ASTRO launched a national program to provide U.S. physicians with training in theranostics, the use of radiopharmaceuticals for diagnosis and therapy. The new Authorized User Training Center Program is being supported by a grant from Novartis and will provide the education and training that’s required by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to offer theranostics. ASTRO hopes the program will meet growing demand for radiopharmaceutical therapy.
- Mach7’s Flamingo Takes Wing: Mach7 Technologies reported the first contract under its new Flamingo Architecture solution, a new cloud-native data architecture designed to unify imaging data across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments. Mach7 launched Flamingo at RSNA 2025, and recently said it had secured the first five-year subscription contract for the architecture with UnityPoint Health, a health system serving Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Mach7 also said it plans to expand internationally into markets in Europe and the Middle East.
- Intraoperative MRI Alliance: SpinTech MRI and IMRIS partnered in an alliance to combine their technologies for intraoperative MRI. IMRIS will integrate SpinTech’s STAGE software for accelerating MRI scans into its InVision Surgical Theatre platform, which mounts a moving MRI scanner in an operating suite to provide image guidance during procedures without having to move the patient. Neurosurgeons using IMRIS technology will get faster image access with improved image quality.
- 4DMedical Expands UChicago Agreement: 4DMedical expanded its relationship with the University of Chicago Medicine to include the commercial deployment of the company’s recently cleared CT:VQ technology. UChicago was already using 4DMedical solutions like its CT LVAS technology, and the expansion gives the university access to CT:VQ for calculating and analyzing lung function. UChicago joins an expanding portfolio of luminary sites using CT:VQ technology.
- Few False Positives with Lung Screening: One of the issues holding back wider adoption of CT lung cancer screening is fear of false positives, but a new study in Journal of Surgical Research found a low false-positive rate. Among 1.7k patients screened in a rural health system, the false-positive rate – defined as Lung-RADS 3 cases – was 9.4% on the first scan, and dropped to 1.6% if only Lung-RADS 4B and 4X cases were considered “positive.” Lung screening’s false-positive rate is similar to mammography screening.
- DL-Based CT Reduces Radiation Dose: New revelations on cancer risk from medical radiation have focused attention on dose reduction, especially for kids. In a new paper in European Journal of Radiology, researchers performed abdominal CT scans on 82 kids using Canon Medical’s AiCE deep learning reconstruction protocol with an ultralow-dose scanning technique that included thin-slice (0.5mm) image reconstruction. The protocol reduced radiation dose by 60% (1.7 vs. 4.2 mGy), with better ratings for image noise and contrast to noise.
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