Potential Time and Recall Benefits for Adaptive AI-Based Breast Cancer MRI Screening

Abbreviated breast MRI protocols are advocated for breast screening as they limit acquisition duration and increase resource availability. However, radiologists' specificity may be slightly lowered when only such short protocols are evaluated. An adaptive approach, where a full protocol is performed only when abnormalities are detected by artificial intelligence (AI)-based models in the abbreviated protocol, might improve and speed up MRI screening. This study explores the potential benefits of such an approach.

To assess the potential impact of adaptive breast MRI scanning based on AI detection of malignancies.

Mathematical model.

Breast cancer screening protocols.

Theoretical upper and lower limits on expected protocol duration and recall rate were determined for the adaptive approach, and the influence of the AI model and radiologists' performance metrics on these limits was assessed, under the assumption that any finding on the abbreviated protocol would, in an ideal follow-up scenario, prompt a second MRI with the full protocol.

Estimated most likely scenario.

Theoretical limits for the proposed adaptive AI-based MRI breast cancer screening showed that the recall rates of the abbreviated and full screening protocols always constrained the recall rate. These abbreviated and full protocols did not fully constrain the expected protocol duration, and an adaptive protocol's expected duration could thus be shorter than the abbreviated protocol duration. Specificity, either from AI models or radiologists, has the largest effect on the theoretical limits. In the most likely scenario, the adaptive protocol achieved an expected protocol duration reduction of ~47%-60% compared with the full protocol.

The proposed adaptive approach may offer a reduction in expected protocol duration compared with the use of the full protocol alone, and a lower recall rate relative to an abbreviated-only approach could be achieved. Optimal performance was observed when AI models emulated radiologists' decision-making behavior, rather than focusing solely on near-perfect malignancy detection.

Not applicable.

Stage 6.