AI to Help Transform Breast Cancer Screening

Congratulations to AIML’s Professor Gustavo Carneiro who is part of the MRFF grant awarded to St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, allocating $2,260,100 in funding to research breast cancer screening technologies using AI!

The researchers are hoping to improve breast cancer detection rates by developing AI screening methods that can be used in conjunction with current practices. This technique of implementing AI systems to provide a 'second opinion' to aid clinicians is becoming an increasingly popular and successful application of AI technology in medicine.

"By improving screening accuracy, and predicting the appearance of cancerous lesions even when they are hardly noticeable on a mammogram, we target the reduction of lives taken by breast cancer and a decrease of unnecessary breast biopsies. Our team is honoured to be part of an outstanding research team, involving St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital BreastScreen, BreastScreen Victoria, University of Melbourne and AIML" said Professor Gustavo Carneiro, Director of Medical Machine Learning at AIML.

This investment shows the Federal Government's strong commitment to research that enables the collaboration between AI researchers and the medical sciences. This funding is from Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) initiative, where $19 million has been dedicated to transformative and game-changing AI technologies in the health sector. The funding is specifically looking at how we can prevent, diagnose and treat many health issues, including mental health, eye and cardiovascular diseases and neurological diseases.

More information from the announcement from the Federal Minister for Health can be viewed here.