Stockholm adopts AI-supported breast cancer screening region-wide

Sweden’s Stockholm region has chosen AI-supported breast cancer screening for its entire regional programme, extending an approach already used at one hospital, medical AI company Lunit has announced. The expansion follows research in which one radiologist working with AI found more cancers than two radiologists reading the scans.

Lunit’s mammogram analysis system will be supplied, in partnership with Swedish medical imaging company Sectra, to the three hospitals responsible for the region’s screening. The AI will independently read mammograms, or breast X-rays, taking the place of one of the two specialist readers used in the standard European approach. A radiologist will remain involved.

The evidence includes the ScreenTrustCAD study, conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institute and Capio St Göran Hospital. It evaluated the system in real screening conditions using data from about 55,000 women screened between April 2021 and June 2022. The findings were published in The Lancet Digital Health in 2023.

St Göran Hospital adopted the system in 2023, replacing one radiologist in its two-reader process. According to Lunit, the hospital has since used the AI to read about 200,000 mammograms over roughly three years. That combination of clinical research and routine hospital experience underpins the wider rollout.