AI Tool Developed by UC Researchers Reduces Breast Cancer Biopsy Wait Times
Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have developed an AI tool that significantly reduces the wait time for breast cancer biopsies. The tool, named Mirai, was created to quickly identify women at high risk of breast cancer following abnormal mammograms. By using this AI-guided workflow, patients can undergo the entire diagnostic process, from imaging to evaluation and potentially biopsy, in a single day. The study, led by Maggie Chung, MD, and published in Nature Digital Medicine, highlights the tool's ability to predict cancer risk more effectively than traditional methods. The AI model was trained on hundreds of thousands of mammograms and applied to over 4,100 screenings at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, identifying 12.7% of patients as high risk. This approach allows for immediate interpretation and further diagnostic imaging, reducing the wait for a biopsy from over two months to less than ten days for those diagnosed with cancer. 
