{"id":4220,"date":"2019-04-11T14:29:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T14:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cmshub.wpengine.com\/?p=241439"},"modified":"2024-11-03T15:17:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T15:17:14","slug":"after-breast-cancer-diagnosis-technology-professor-teaches-computers-to-read-mammograms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/after-breast-cancer-diagnosis-technology-professor-teaches-computers-to-read-mammograms\/","title":{"rendered":"After Breast Cancer Diagnosis, Technology Professor Teaches Computers to Read Mammograms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regina Barzilay is a technology professor who teaches a popular class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about how computers can decipher ancient texts. She says the work is not really very applicable to the real world, but she loves it anyway, and so do her students.<\/span>\u201cThis is clearly of no practical use,\u201d she says. \u201cBut it was really cool, and I was really obsessed about this topic, how machines could do it.\u201d<\/span>But she was about to get a wake-up call concerning a way she could apply her specific knowledge to a very important topic.<\/span>Barzilay first got the idea when she was diagnosed with breast cancer<\/a> in 2014. She realized how much potential there was for human error in the simple fact that mammograms are read by doctors, who also determine the woman\u2019s breast density, a very subjective task.<\/span>\u201cI was really surprised how primitive information technology is in the hospitals,\u201d she says. \u201cIt almost felt that we were in a different century.\u201d<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Adobe Stock\/okrasyuk<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span>Even beyond diagnosis, Barzilay says she kept coming across moments when she had questions that should have been answerable, if only the right technology had been introduced to the industry to analyze the data.<\/span>\u201cAt every point of my treatment, there would be some point of uncertainty, and I would say, \u2018Gosh, I wish we had the technology to solve it,’\u201d she says. \u201cSo when I was done with the treatment, I started my long journey toward this goal.\u201d<\/span>It seemed only natural, when she was able to get back to her job, that Barzilay reconsider the path her research was taking. The journey to get enough funding and get started was difficult, because the National Cancer Institute and other organizations weren\u2019t interested in contributing, but she knew she could help people immensely if she could get the project off the ground.<\/span>Then she found Connie Lehman<\/a>, a Harvard University radiologist who is chief of breast imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. The pair began collaborating on the project, and now they\u2019re in the middle of teaching a machine all the steps it needs to know to accurately assess a mammogram image.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Adobe Stock\/chompoo<\/a><\/span>The first thing Barzilay and Lehman taught a computer how to do was to determine breast density<\/a> using a deep-learning algorithm. \u201cWe\u2019re excited about this because we find there\u2019s a lot of human variation in assessing breast density,\u201d Lehman says, \u201cand so we\u2019ve trained our deep-learning model to assess the density in a much more consistent way.\u201d<\/span>Now that the machine is pretty good at accurately and consistently labeling dense breasts, the team is moving on to giving it lessons in spotting changes between a new mammogram and an older one from the same woman.<\/span>\u201cThese are the sorts of things that we can also teach a model, but more importantly we allow the model to teach itself,\u201d Barzilay says<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s the power of artificial intelligence \u2014 it\u2019s not simply automating rules that the researchers provide but also creating its own rules. The optimist in me says in three years we can train this tool to read mammograms as well as an average radiologist. So we\u2019ll see. That\u2019s what we\u2019re working on.\u201d<\/span>
\n<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Adobe Stock\/Myroslava<\/a><\/span>The technology has a ways to go still, but Barzilay and other experts are confident that it\u2019s capable of getting to where it needs to be to read most mammograms in place of a radiologist, thereby freeing radiologists up to tackle other problems. The real challenge<\/a> may come in the form of making sure patients are comfortable having their scans read by a machine, as well as determining whether the technology will be FDA-monitored or regulated in some other way. There are also the potential legal and ethical issues that could arise when the algorithm screws up and misdiagnoses a woman.<\/span>Yes, there are still many hurdles to face. But science is moving the technology for things like mammogram analysis forward at a miraculous pace, with the help of women like Barzilay, who have been brave enough to speak up when things aren\u2019t as they should be. Let\u2019s keep making the world a better place together!<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0Share on Facebook<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span>Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regina Barzilay is a technology professor who teaches a popular class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about how computers can decipher ancient texts. She says the work is not really very applicable to the real world, but she loves it anyway, and so do her students.\u201cThis is clearly of no practical use,\u201d she says. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44537,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4220\/revisions\/44537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}