Breast Imaging Research

The breast imaging division at UMass is active in research. The Division Director of Breast Imaging, Gopal Vijayaraghavan MD, MPH, has recently received the Award of Capital Grant ($750K) as part of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center’s 2020 Women’s Health Program for his research “Improving Breast Cancer Diagnosis Using Artificial Intelligence in Mammography Screenings.” There is a pressing need to develop a technology like artificial intelligence (AI) that can help facilitate the early detection of cancer.  Interval cancers (breast cancers occurring less than 1 year since the last screening mammogram) accounts for nearly 30% of all breast cancers. This suggests that nearly 1/3rd of mammographic detected cancers may have been present on a prior mammogram. We have partnered with DeepHealth, a local company, that has developed an artificial intelligence-based software using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to aid radiologists in the interpretation of screening mammograms. This will allow the radiologists to improve efficiency, detect more cancers, find them earlier, and lower the number of women called back for additional imaging. We plan to test this AI software on a large patient dataset generated from our university hospital in a true clinical setting. The study will also involve collaboration with computer scientists from UMass Boston in the application of the advanced deep learning classifiers.