Artificial Intelligence for the Clinician Episode 5: Are Radiologists Out of a Job?

Behind The Knife: The Surgery Podcast

Education, Science, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome back to the AI journal club! In this episode, we bring you a deep dive into a game-changing paper from The Lancet -- the MASAI study. This is the first randomized controlled trial to evaluate the use of artificial intelligence in breast cancer screening and we're so excited to discuss it.

We'll break down the study's impressive findings on interval cancer rates, sensitivity, and massive workload reductions for radiologists. Beyond the data, we'll tackle the big-picture questions and some sensational recent headlines. Are we deploying AI too fast? Or is it time to go faster?

Hosts:
- Ayman Ali, MD
Ayman Ali is a Behind the Knife fellow and general surgery PGY-4 at Duke Hospital in his academic development time where he focuses on data science, artificial intelligence, and surgery.

- Ruchi Thanawala, MD: @Ruchi_TJ
Ruchi Thanawala is an Associate Professor of Informatics and Thoracic Surgery at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and founder of Firefly, an AI-driven platform that is built for competency-based medical education. In addition, she is the Director of the Surgical Data and Decision Sciences Lab for the Department of Surgery at OHSU and Associate Program Director for the Clinical Informatics Sub-specialty Fellowship.

- Phillip Jenkins, MD: @PhilJenkinsMD
Phil Jenkins is a general surgery PGY-4 at Oregon Health and Science University and a National Library of Medicine Post-Doctoral fellow pursuing a master’s in clinical informatics.

***Fellowship Application Link: https://forms.gle/QSUrR2GWHDZ1MmWC6

Transcript

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0:00.0	Behind the Night, The Surgery Podcast, Relevant and Engaging Content to help you dominate the day. We want you want you, yes, you, to join the Behind the Knife team as a surgical education fellow.
0:39.9	We're looking for enterprising surgical residents to take the bull by the horns and build something new and exciting.
0:46.6	Fellows will benefit from ample support from the Behind the Knife team, including the use of our digital education platform, and access to all of our resources like
0:54.8	illustrators, video editing, AI tools, social media, and more.
0:59.7	Get your name out there and build your CV by being part of the number one surgery education
1:04.2	platform in the world. We're offering a two-year fellowship starting July 26 and ending in June 2028.
1:12.4	Only residents beginning their two-year academic development time will be considered.
1:16.9	Check out the show notes for more information, including the application link.
1:20.4	All applications are due on April 20th.
1:23.7	Again, all applications are due by April 20th.
1:27.4	Now, get out there and dominate the day.
1:30.6	Welcome back to the Behind the Knife Artificial Intelligence series and specifically our journal
1:34.9	club. I'm I'm not only a general surgery PGY4 at Duke Hospital. And I'm really excited about
1:40.1	this episode today because we're going to discuss a landmark randomized control trial in
1:45.4	AI and breast radiology that was recently published in the Lancet. This is the first
1:51.0	artificial intelligence randomized control trial within the space of breast radiology.
1:55.7	And so it's really important to discuss what it means, how it was done, and whether or not this can be implemented. Before we go further into the study, I want to introduce my co-hosts. They're both from Oregon Health and Science University. I have Dr. Phil Jenkins, another PGI4, and then Dr. Ruchy Thunewa, who was a thoracic surgeon at OHSU. All right, so let's just jump into the study.
2:19.6	The study was called the Maasai study.
2:23.0	I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that as the author's intended, but it's the mammography screening with artificial intelligence, and it was published in the Lancet a few weeks ago.
2:27.8	Again, it's the first randomized control trial that looks at the effect of AI on breast
2:32.3	cancer, and specifically what the authors did here is
2:35.0	interval cancers. So they deployed this in Sweden, and there were about 100,000 women
	...

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