00:01This AI is quite powerful and exciting. It can scan mammograms and pick up patterns that
00:08the human eye cannot see. It does this by operating at a pixel level, whereas the resolution
00:14of the human eye is far more limited. And what it does is it gives a risk score between
00:20zero and 100, which conveys the likelihood of a woman developing breast cancer over the
00:26next four years. So a new study has been published today, which found it's far more effective
00:32at determining risk than the common factors we use right now, which are things like age
00:37or family history. The study found one in 10 women that were in the top 2% of the risk
00:43score
00:43went on to develop breast cancer, even though they had been given the all clear from a mammogram.
00:49So that's quite a significant breakthrough because those women were at high risk, but
00:53were effectively missed. The strength of the tool also lies in the fact that it's been
00:58trained on millions of Australian mammograms, and it's seen more images than a radiologist
01:04could see in their lifetime. It's also very effective when it comes to people with dense
01:09breasts. So dense tissue and cancer both appear white in a mammogram, which makes things difficult,
01:16but the AI can actually tell them apart, which is quite amazing. So researchers say it is the
01:22biggest step forward since the national screening program came to be about 35 years ago. They
01:28say it moves away from that one size fits all approach though, and it could actually reduce
01:32our overall system costs. That's because if you've got a low risk score, you could actually
01:38start to have fewer mammograms. Because it is cost effective, there is hope that it could
01:44lead to us lowering the age that we start screening women, which is currently age 40. And researchers
01:52say we really need to start screening women earlier than that if we're going to achieve
01:56the long term goal of zero deaths from breast cancer. This tool is expected to be rolled out
02:03in the next five years.
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