Breast cancer detection using Machine Learning

Breast Cancer diagnostics has evolved over time from regular physical check-ups with your family doctor to high-end mammogram tests that have helped numerous women survive from the deadly disease thanks to earlier diagnostics and treatment. But very often we see several women reluctant to visit the doctor or their local health clinic for a routine breast check-up due to various reasons. It may be privacy issues, or clinical or psychological or anything. This is one area where technology has been thoroughly making transformational changes to empower women to self-diagnose breast cancer and the latest addition is AI powered breast cancer diagnostic tools.

With an innumerable amount of smart healthcare wearables like Smart Bra, Smart Cups, etc available today, it is possible to transmit data pertaining to their breasts to AI powered learning systems that swiftly analyze and diagnose any irregularities or deformations in breast tissues and calculate the health coefficient of breasts. Before we go into the details, it is important to understand why is there a need to bring in such advanced self-diagnostic healthcare tools for women today. Let us examine some facts pertaining to breast cancer today.

The US alone estimates that close to 1 percent of its population or 40,610 women are expected to die in 2017 alone due to breast cancer. This is a shocking insight into how breast cancer has evolved over the years from a rare occurrence to a household name as common as the common cold. Nearly 30 % of newly diagnosed cancer cases in the US in 2017 is estimated to be linked to the breast area of women. Though men have 1 in 1000 probability of chest cancer occurrence, they too are not completely devoid of the risk situation. But it is our women that are increasingly being prone to this deadly disease. With such an alarming situation existing, it is imperative for women to be as much aware of the health of their breasts as possible to avoid being late in detecting and treating symptoms of breast cancer.

Coming back to AI, today AI enabled systems can be trained to diagnose a large number of complex breast imperfections that are symptoms of cancerous growth. As we always say in our blogs, AI is never a replacement for humans, it is only an aid to help humans achieve even greater things. AI can never replace your doctor, but it can certainly help your doctor to identify possible malicious patterns that may be skipped accidentally during a regular examination. The system uses deep learning to examine slides of breast tissue and analyse parameters such as cell growth rate, breast tissue temperature, size and dimensional growth of projections, cluster of cells having unusual growth patterns, etc. and compares the information analysed with millions of healthcare records to identify any similarity between them and a positive similarity will be noted and further analysed or the system will prompt the user to visit her physician immediately and get it further examined for a more confirmative diagnostics.

The system greatly benefits both users and physicians at the same time while allowing grave medical conditions to be identified early and successfully cured. For women patients or potential patients, the system allows them to identify any possible symptoms from home without having to visit a clinic or doctor regularly. This saves considerably on the cost front since advance diagnostics usually come at a premium. For doctors, the system allows for a more comprehensive analysis of specimen and hidden traits or patterns that may be missed out during the naked eye inspection may be spotted by machines because they are trained to precisely observe every pixel point of the focus area. However, the system can only suggest a symptom. Confirmation is always at the discretion of a registered physician, but the real advantage of the system is that it makes all this process quite easy for everyone involved.

With more advancements made in clinical diagnostics technology, it is only a matter of time when advanced wearable’s hit the market for low costs and AI systems would have more data to sniff through and breast cancer predictions would be more linear and prompt. Using them, healthcare providers can remotely offer advanced diagnostic services to anyone across the globe thereby making cancer care truly global. Such humongous possibilities make this sector worth investing in.

If your healthcare service is looking for ways to offer advanced AI powered breast cancer diagnostic services to a global patient base, get in touch with us to know how we could help power your service on the cloud with advanced AI engineering and diagnostic advisory. Drop us a line and our consultants will at your service shortly.