AI Can Identify Women at Risk of Breast Cancer Years in Advance, Study Finds

Visitors walk past a sculpture of a pink ribbon installed to promote the "Pink Ribbon" breast cancer awareness campaign in this illustration, October 5, 2011. (Reuters)
Visitors walk past a sculpture of a pink ribbon installed to promote the "Pink Ribbon" breast cancer awareness campaign in this illustration, October 5, 2011. (Reuters)
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AI Can Identify Women at Risk of Breast Cancer Years in Advance, Study Finds

Visitors walk past a sculpture of a pink ribbon installed to promote the "Pink Ribbon" breast cancer awareness campaign in this illustration, October 5, 2011. (Reuters)
Visitors walk past a sculpture of a pink ribbon installed to promote the "Pink Ribbon" breast cancer awareness campaign in this illustration, October 5, 2011. (Reuters)

Artificial intelligence is able to identify women who have an elevated risk of developing breast cancer several years before it is diagnosed, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) said on Tuesday.

Five researchers from FHI, the University of California and the University of Washington were given access to a commercially available AI program to retroactively analyze the mammographies of 116,495 women who took part in a Norwegian detection program between 2004 and 2018.

In total, 1,607 of the women developed breast cancer.

The algorithm was able to predict which women ran a higher risk of developing breast cancer, and even identify which breast was at risk, four to six years before a diagnosis.

"We noted that the breast which developed cancer had an AI score about twice as high as the other breast," said Solveig Hofvind, who heads the detection program and the AI project.

"The study shows that the AI algorithms already available on the market can be used to develop more personalized detection programs," she said.

AI could be used for early detection of breast cancer, to reduce costs and better target at-risk populations, FHI said.

According to the World Health Organization, 670,000 women died of breast cancer in 2022, the most common form of cancer among women in most countries.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network, which edits a collection of prestigious medical journals.

The Norwegian detection program also launched a project last year involving 140,000 women to determine whether AI could be as efficient as, or even better than, radiologists to diagnose cancer cases.



Microsoft Halts China-based Tech Support for Pentagon Systems

FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
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Microsoft Halts China-based Tech Support for Pentagon Systems

FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)

Microsoft said Friday it is making sure that personnel based in China are not providing technical support for US Defense Department systems, after investigative news site ProPublica revealed the practice earlier this week.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth confirmed that work on Defense Department cloud services had been outsourced to people in China, insisting that the country will not have "any involvement whatsoever" with the department's systems going forward.

"Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services," the company's chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, said in a post on X.

ProPublica reported Tuesday that the tech giant was using engineers based in China -- Washington's primary military rival -- to maintain Pentagon computer systems, with only limited supervision by US personnel who often lacked the necessary expertise to do the job effectively.

US Senator Tom Cotton asked Hegseth to look into the matter in a letter dated Thursday, and the Pentagon chief responded that he would do so.

Hegseth then posted a video on X Friday evening in which he said "it turns out that some tech companies have been using cheap Chinese labor to assist with DoD cloud services. This is obviously unacceptable, especially in today's digital threat environment."

"At my direction, the department will... initiate -- as fast as we can -- a two-week review, or faster, to make sure that what we uncovered isn't happening anywhere else across the DoD," AFP quoted him as saying.

"We will continue to monitor and counter all threats to our military infrastructure and online networks," he added, thanking "all those Americans out there in the media and elsewhere who raised this issue to our attention so we could address it."