Doctors have a new tool to diagnose breast cancer. It is called Google Health. The tool uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to find anything abnormal in breast tissue. Researchers trained an AI program to find abnormalities. It read lots of results from X-rays over the past few years. Doctors currently use X-rays to detect breast cancer. Google Health will help doctors to read X-rays more accurately. The current system is that two doctors agree on whether or not an X-ray shows cancer. If they cannot agree, they ask a third doctor. Google Health will do this more quickly.
Researchers from Google Health worked with experts from a London university to design the program. They input X-rays from more than 91,000 women in the UK and USA into its software. This then produced an algorithm. In hospital tests, the algorithm did better at reading X-rays than six doctors. Google Health said: "Our team is really proud of these research findings, which suggest that we are on our way to developing a tool that can help doctors spot breast cancer with greater accuracy." The World Cancer Research Fund said two million new cases of breast cancer were reported in 2019.