Tag: Mirai
One Survivor’s AI Breakthrough Predicts Cancer Years Ahead
AI Decoded focusses on one of the most urgent, tangible uses of artificial intelligence: health care — we speak to Dr Regina Barzilay, an MIT professor who is building machine-learning AI models to predict disease. She herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, and has used that experience and knowledge to target her research towards prevention — the AI model she and her team built, named MIRAI, is now able to detect a patient’s risk of developing breast cancer within five years. Are we on the brink of a revolution in treating cancer for everyone? Find out on AI Decoded... Joining presenter Christian Fraser is AI Decoded co-host Stephanie Hare and the BBC's AI correspondent Marc Cieslak Learn more
Marketwatch25: She survived breast cancer. Now her AI tool could help you skip annual mammograms.
As an MIT computer-science professor, Regina Barzilay was used to living on the bleeding edge of innovation, teaching computers to understand words in the nascent field of natural language processing. But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, she was thrust into a different and, as she describes it, “really backwards” technological world. Learn more
TIME100 AI 2025
Regina Barzilay is in the business of patient future-telling. That is, using machine learning AI models to predict disease—including when and how it will strike, along with how it may behave. Barzilay began pursuing this after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014. As a patient, she experienced the frustrating uncertainty surrounding individual prognoses. Her questions about treatments were often answered in reference to what happened to the participants of clinical trials, but she felt those answers gave her little information about her individual situation.As an AI researcher, she knew how to address that uncertainty. “To me it was quite clear,” she says, “That's what machine learning is about.” A decade later, the AI model she and her team built, named MIRAI, is able to detect a patient’s risk of developing breast cancer within five years. By 2025, MIRAI was validated by over 2 million mammograms in 48 hospitals across 22 countries.
And her future-telling continues. In 2024, Barzilay worked on an AI model that estimates the expected effectiveness of candidate flu vaccines by predicting which versions of the flu virus are likely to spread next season. She’s now working on using the same concept on cancer, in order to predict how patients—particularly with advanced cancers—will react to a specific treatment. “We are constantly running behind the disease,” she says. “The idea here is to be able to predict it.” Learn more
Balancing Power With Caution: AI’s Impact On Breast Cancer
During my seven years as president and CEO of Susan G. Komen, I’ve witnessed the impact of innovation in our mission to end breast cancer for good. Over the past four decades, we’ve seen a 44% reduction in breast cancer mortality, thanks to early detection and better treatments. AI is now accelerating this progress with its capacity to analyze vast datasets, discover new patterns and enhance diagnostic accuracy.Take, for example, the groundbreaking work of Komen scholar Dr. Regina Barzilay. Using her own mammograms in her research at MIT, Dr. Barzilay demonstrated how AI could have detected her breast cancer much earlier, potentially improving her prognosis. Studies show that incorporating AI into mammogram analysis boosts cancer detection rates by 20%, without increasing false positives. This is a significant leap forward, as early detection is key to a better chance at positive outcomes and survival. Learn more
