ScreenPoint Medical has highlighted final results from Sweden’s MASAI trial, published in The Lancet, showing that its Transpara Detection AI contributed to a 12% reduction in the rate of interval cancers and 27% fewer aggressive cancers (non-luminal A subtype) in mammography screening.
The MASAI trial comprised over 105,000 women in a first randomized controlled trial exploring whether AI could benefit mammography screening. Interval cancers are breast cancers diagnosed between screening rounds that were not detected at screening, and are associated with higher mortality compared to screen-detected cancers.
Previous research from the trial found that Transpara Detection increased the cancer detection rate by 29% while reducing screen-reading workload by 44% compared to double-reading standard of care.
“MASAI demonstrates that breast AI has crossed a critical threshold: right now, it is shaping a healthier future for populations at scale, it is allowing healthcare providers to do their best and most efficient work, and most importantly, it is having a profound impact for women around the world,” said Pieter Kroese, CEO of ScreenPoint Medical. “When this level of evidence exists, the imperative shifts from asking whether AI should be used to ensuring women everywhere benefit from it.”
The study found sensitivity was 6.7 percentage points higher in the AI-supported group than the control group (80.5% vs 73.8%) at the same specificity, with consistent results across age and breast density subgroups. Researchers also observed 16% fewer invasive interval cancers and 21% fewer large (T2+) interval cancers in the intervention group.
“These findings indicate that AI-supported mammography screening can help find important breast cancers earlier and reduce the number of cancers that appear between regular screenings, particularly those that are more aggressive,” said Dr. Kristina Lång, lead researcher at Lund University. “As these types of cancers typically result in poorer outcomes, earlier detection may make a meaningful difference for women’s health.”
