We present a deep convolutional neural network for breast cancer screening exam classification, trained and evaluated on over 200,000 exams (over 1,000,000 images). Our network achieves an AUC of 0.895 in predicting whether there is a cancer in the breast, when tested on the screening population. We attribute the high accuracy of our model to a two-stage training procedure, which allows us to use a very high-capacity patch-level network to learn from pixel-level labels alongside a network learning from macroscopic breast-level labels. To validate our model, we conducted a reader study with 14 readers, each reading 720 screening mammogram exams, and find our model to be as accurate as experienced radiologists when presented with the same data. Finally, we show that a hybrid model, averaging probability of malignancy predicted by a radiologist with a prediction of our neural network, is more accurate than either of the two separately. To better understand our results, we conduct a thorough analysis of our network's performance on different subpopulations of the screening population, model design, training procedure, errors, and properties of its internal representations.deep learning | deep convolutional neural networks | breast cancer screening | mammography B reast cancer is the second leading cancer-related cause of death among women in the US. In 2014, over 39 million screening and diagnostic mammography exams were performed in the US. It is estimated that in 2015 232,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer and approximately 40,000 died from it (1). Although mammography is the only imaging test that has reduced breast cancer mortality (2-4), there has been discussion regarding the potential harms of screening, including false positive recalls and associated false positive biopsies. The vast majority of the 10-15% of women asked to return following an inconclusive screening mammogram undergo another mammogram and/or ultrasound for clarification. After the additional imaging exams, many of these findings are determined as benign and only 10-20% are recommended to undergo a needle biopsy for further work-up. Among these, only 20-40% yield a diagnosis of cancer (5). Evidently, there is an unmet need to shift the balance of routine breast cancer screening towards more benefit and less harm.Traditional computer-aided detection (CAD) in mammography is routinely used by radiologists to assist with image interpretation, despite multicenter studies showing these CAD programs do not improve their diagnostic performance (6).These CAD programs typically use handcrafted features to mark sites on a mammogram that appear distinct from normal tissue structures. The radiologist decides whether to recall these findings, determining clinical significance and actionability. Recent developments in deep learning (7)-in particular, deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) (8-12)-open possibilities for creating a new generation of CAD-like tools.This paper makes several contributions. Primarily, we train and evaluate a set of stro...

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Though consistently shown to detect mammographically occult cancers, breast ultrasound has been noted to have high false-positive rates. In this work, we present an AI system that achieves radiologist-level accuracy in identifying breast cancer in ultrasound images. Developed on 288,767 exams, consisting of 5,442,907 B-mode and Color Doppler images, the AI achieves an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.976 on a test set consisting of 44,755 exams. In a retrospective reader study, the AI achieves a higher AUROC than the average of ten board-certified breast radiologists (AUROC: 0.962 AI, 0.924 ± 0.02 radiologists). With the help of the AI, radiologists decrease their false positive rates by 37.3% and reduce requested biopsies by 27.8%, while maintaining the same level of sensitivity. This highlights the potential of AI in improving the accuracy, consistency, and efficiency of breast ultrasound diagnosis.

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this article is to compare traditional versus machine learning–based computer-aided detection (CAD) platforms in breast imaging with a focus on mammography, to underscore limitations of traditional CAD, and to highlight potential solutions in new CAD systems under development for the future. CONCLUSION. CAD development for breast imaging is undergoing a paradigm shift based on vast improvement of computing power and rapid emergence of advanced deep learning algorithms, heralding new systems that may hold real potential to improve clinical care.