AI-based tool set to improve breast cancer diagnosis

The advance from a team at the Karolinska Institutet could lead to more personalised treatment for breast cancer patients with intermediate risk tumours. The results are published in Annals of Oncology.

In the diagnostic procedure for breast cancer, tissue samples of the tumour are analysed and graded by a pathologist and categorised by risk as low (grade 1), medium (grade 2) or high (grade 3), which guides decisions on the most suitable treatment.

“Roughly half of breast cancer patients have a grade 2 tumour, which unfortunately gives no clear guidance on how the patient is to be treated,” said Yinxi Wang, a doctoral student at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet. “Consequently, some of the patients are over-treated with chemotherapy while others risk being under-treated. It’s this problem that we’ve tried to resolve.”

The AI-based tool further divides the patients with grade 2 tumours into two sub-groups - one high-risk and one low-risk - that are clearly distinguishable in terms of the recurrence risk.