FDA Approves Artificial Intelligence for Detecting Suspicious Mammography Lesions

This week Zebra Medical announced the FDA approval for their HealthMammo artificial intelligence system. This system scans mammograms and marks them as either “suspicious” or “not suspicious.” This way the radiologist can prioritize the suspicious scans for review and shorten the time to diagnosis for women with early breast cancer.

During the testing period, HealthMammo identified two women with suspicious lesions who had been missed and were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer.

This system could be particularly useful to help radiologists deal with the backlog of scans they are now facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The volume of mammograms during the lock-down period dropped significantly and now that routine imaging has resumed, artificial intelligence could help to flag the potentially suspicious scans so that diagnosis times are not extended while physicians are trying to address the large backlog of imaging.

Hopefully this interesting new system will help to shorten the time to diagnosis for early breast cancer.