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The Economist The Process

The process of breast screening is where two human readers look at the mammograms, then they make a decision on that and they disagree it as a third human reader.

Gerald Lipp is a radiologist in charge of screening for breast cancer in the northeast of Scotland.

Gerald and his team recently wanted to find out how an artificial intelligence tool could help their service.

We had 10,000 women go through the system and where two humans said there was nothing seen

on the mammograms, this is when the AI kicked in and the AI would give us a reading and

said, there's something on this mammogram and they'll have a circle on the mammogram and say, would you like to look at this area a bit more closely?

One of the very first few patients we did, there was a lady named Barbara. And Barbara

was the lady who was reaching her 70s. So this would have been her last time coming to the

screening program. We wouldn't have seen her last time coming to the screening program.

We wouldn't have seen her again.

And the AI did highlight a very subtle area in the right breast which two human readers

had already said was okay and they weren't worried about it.

The expert readers ourselves, with the help of the AI, augmented by it, looked at this area

...