Big-name healthcare orgs tap AI to improve breast imaging workflows
Two big name healthcare organizations are taking steps to implement artificial intelligence into their breast cancer screening workflows.
Therapixel—a developer of radiology AI solutions—announced Wednesday that Mayo Clinic had procured the appropriate licenses necessary to integrate MammoScreen across its radiology departments. The AI-based software assists radiologists with multiple aspects of breast cancer screening workflows, including work list management, comparing lesions against patients’ prior screening images, breast density categorization and more.
MammoScreen has been tested in numerous clinical trials. These investigations have revealed several benefits, including reduced recall rates, improved sensitivity and specificity, enhanced breast density assessments, and shortened interpretation times, enabling radiologists to increase their output by approximately 13%.
The software categorizes exams as either red or green and scored from 1 to 10, with red indicating suspicious findings and green suggesting the images are unremarkable, and higher scores signaling greater suspicion. This feature increases radiologists’ interpretation speeds by around 35% and turnaround times by 17%—a feature that will likely be well-received in Mayo’s busy radiology departments.
"This license agreement represents a meaningful step in making our AI tools accessible to more radiologists and patients," Matthieu Leclerc-Chalvet, CEO of Therapixel, said in a news release on the partnership.
Outpatient imaging provider SimonMed made a similar announcement on Wednesday, disclosing its partnership with Lunit, another provider of AI radiology solutions. That agreement will mingle Lunit’s Insight DBT software, which also assists in breast cancer screening.
“This partnership enables us to offer the most precise and personalized mammogram experience to date—and when paired with our board-certified breast radiologists, we believe it offers the most advanced mammogram available today,” Sean Raj, MD, MBA, chief innovation officer at SimonMed Imaging and a fellow of the Society of Breast Imaging, said of the partnership.
These moves come as more organizations are looking to integrate AI on some level into their clinical workflows. A recent report indicated that up to half of radiology organizations either already have or are expecting to incorporate AI into their practices within the next five years.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.