by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | July 04, 2022
From the July 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
In September 2021, iCAD launched two solutions as part of its Breast AI Suite. ProFound AI Risk for Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) is a new clinical decision support tool that provides a short-term breast cancer risk estimation that is personalized for each patient based on their mammogram. It combines a range of risk factors, including age, breast density and subtle mammographic features, offering approximately 2.4 times more accuracy than traditional long-term risk models, according to a recent study.
Physicians have traditionally estimated breast cancer risk by examining the patient’s known risk factors, such as family history; but about 85% of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history of breast cancer, said Stacey Stevens, president and chief executive officer of iCAD Inc.
In addition, some women have a higher risk of developing breast cancer based on their geographical location and ancestry. For example, African American women have an approximately 40% higher risk of dying from breast cancer compared to white women, and are disproportionately affected by more aggressive subtypes, such as triple-negative breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer, Stevens said. ProFound AI Risk is specifically designed to factor in racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as clinically-relevant global screening guidelines and more than 15 country incidence and mortality reference tables, for alignment with that country’s general population.
"Risk-based screening strategies for individual women can reduce harm and costs, but current risk models vary in accuracy and can be complex, cumbersome and costly to implement," Stevens said. "ProFound AI Risk is the first and only commercially-available clinical decision support tool that provides an accurate short-term breast cancer risk estimation that is truly personalized for each woman, based only on her mammogram. It offers the highest area under the curve (AUC) available for providing a one-year future risk estimation based on a screening mammogram. This advanced solution provides superior insights that empower clinicians to tailor a woman’s breast screening regimen and potentially identify cancers earlier, when they may be more easily treated."
Last year the company also launched the latest version of PowerLook Density Assessment, a multivendor, deep learning, automated breast density assessment algorithm that uses synthetic images generated from 3D mammography. It offers improved matching accuracy compared to previous versions of the software, Stevens said.
