Tag: Mirai
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
NOVA ‘A.I. REVOLUTION’ Dives Into the Past, Present, and Future of One of the Most Consequential Technological Advancements of Our Time
BOSTON, MA; Feb.12, 2024 — The award-winning PBS science series, NOVA, a production of GBH, will premiere the one-hour film “A.I. REVOLUTION” Wednesday, March 27 at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT on PBS. Can we harness the power of artificial intelligence to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems without creating an uncontrollable force that ultimately destroys us? New A.I. tools like ChatGPT can now answer complex questions, write essays, and generate realistic-looking images in a matter of seconds. In “A.I. REVOLUTION,” which will also be available for streaming at pbs.org/nova, NOVA on YouTube, and the PBS App, correspondent Miles O’Brien meets some of the scientists who are at the forefront of A.I. advancement and explores the promise, perils, and possible future of this unprecedented technology taking the world by storm.Beyond drug discovery and prosthetics, the film explores several other ways that A.I. is transforming science. Computer scientist Regina Barzilay at Massachusetts General Hospital has trained a neural network to detect breast cancer from mammograms years before they are detectable by human eyes with over 85% accuracy. A.I. is also being used to help detect lung cancer. Lives are even being saved from natural disasters, as A.I. is now being deployed in California to detect wildfires early before they rage out of control. Learn more
AI Outperformed Standard Risk Model for Predicting Breast Cancer
In a large study of thousands of mammograms, AI algorithms outperformed the standard clinical risk model for predicting the five-year risk for breast cancer. The results of the study were published in Radiology.A woman’s risk of breast cancer is typically calculated using clinical models such as the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) risk model, which uses self-reported and other information on the patient—including age, family history of the disease, whether she has given birth, and whether she has dense breasts—to calculate a risk score. Learn more
Is artificial intelligence about to transform the mammogram?
When Regina Barzilay returned to work after her breast cancer leave seven years ago, she was struck by an unexpected thought.The MIT artificial-intelligence expert had just endured chemotherapy, two lumpectomies and radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital, and all the brutal side effects that come along with those treatments.
“I walked in the door to my office and thought, ‘We here at MIT are doing all this sophisticated algorithmic work that could have so many applications,’” Barzilay said. “‘And one subway stop away the people who could benefit from it are dying.’” Learn more
