This is exactly the kind of thing we should be using AI for — and showcases the true potential of artificial intelligence.
Scientists created an AI system called AsymMirai. It’s a streamlined deep-learning algorithm that can detect breast cancer up to five years in advance.
Researchers at Duke University used AsymMirai to analyze differences between left and right breast tissue visible in mammograms — a factor previously underutilized for long-term cancer prediction. With this approach, the AI could achieve nearly the same accuracy as previous systems while being acutely simpler for radiologists to understand and more reliable.
The study involved over 210,000 mammograms and underscored the clinical importance of breast asymmetry in forecasting cancer risk.
Lead researcher Jon Donnelly emphasized the potential public health implications of AsymMirai, noting that its insights could shape recommendations for mammogram frequency and improve early detection strategies.
One in eight women, or approximately 13% of the female population in the U.S., will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetime and one in 39 women (3%) will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
Having regularly scheduled mammograms can significantly lower the risk of dying from breast cancer. However, it remains unclear how to precisely predict through screening alone which women will develop breast cancer.
Mirai, a state-of-the-art, deep learning-based algorithm, has demonstrated proficiency as a tool to help predict breast cancer but, because little is known about its reasoning process, the algorithm has the potential for overreliance by radiologists and incorrect diagnoses.
“Mirai is a black box—a very large and complex neural network, similar in construction to ChatGPT—and no one knew how it made its decisions,” said the study’s lead author, Jon Donnelly, BS, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at Duke University in Durham, NC.
“We can, with surprisingly high accuracy, predict whether a woman will develop cancer in the next 1 to 5 years based solely on localized differences between her left and right breast tissue,” he said.
“This could have public impact because it could, in the not-too-distant future, affect how often women receive mammograms.
