A Trial Comparing Screening Mammography With and Without Assistance From Artificial Intelligence for Breast Cancer Detection and Recall Rates in Adult Patients

Description

During the RCT the AI support tool will be randomized to be turned on or off (1:1) at the mammography exam level. Patients who return for screening exams in year 2 of recruitment will be randomized again (e.g., they will not retain their prior randomization). Radiologists will not be able to sort exams based on AI availability or AI scores. Randomizing by exam level will ensure that we capture a substantial number of interpretations with vs. without AI for each radiologist, allowing for quantification of the radiologist-level AI learning curve. We are not randomizing at the facility level as some radiologists interpret exams acquired at different facilities on the same day. By randomizing AI at the exam level, we will have the best ability to estimate and adjust for temporal trends in screening outcomes across individual radiologists. Randomization across large regional health systems will be managed independently at each participating site.

Our RCT randomizes screening mammography exams to be interpreted either with or without an AI decision-support tool. As a result, radiologists cannot be blinded to study arm during screening mammography interpretation. However, interpreting radiologists and facility staff (e.g., those scheduling the exams) will not know in advance which patients will be randomized to the AI tool. Randomization occurs within minutes after the breast imaging acquisition (i.e., when the mammography technologist captures the images) by an automated system that was developed by a third-party AI platform and successfully piloted at UCLA. Thus, the AI data (or lack thereof) is embedded within the mammogram before the radiologist opens the exam, preventing any option to “add AI” to an exam randomized to be interpreted without AI. Radiologists will be aware of AI availability only at the time of interpretation, as AI information will appear upon opening the exam (e.g., the AI information pops up with the exam images).