AI software detects breast cancer metastases in lymph node tissue

An AI medical device improves diagnostic accuracy and detects if breast cancer has metastasized to lymph nodes.

Paige Breast Lymph Node is a software that has over 98 per cent slide level sensitivity of metastases detection of any size, offering pathologists a quicker and more efficient way to analyse large quantities of lymph node tissue.

Determining whether cancer in the breast has spread to the lymphatic system is critical to a patient’s diagnosis and planned treatment. Due to the size of the tissue area and size of the small micro-metastases, a pathologist’s accurate assessment of a lymph node slide can be tedious and time-consuming.

The medical device leverages AI to empower pathologists to identify tumor metastases of any size, including small micrometastases, more efficiently and reliably.

A positive indication of metastatic breast cancer will be displayed at the individual lymph node level with Paige’s proprietary TissueMap, which highlights all regions on a slide that are suspicious for cancer. In addition, both slides and cases with suspected positive lymph nodes are highlighted, facilitating their prioritization and efficient review by the pathologist.

“Accurate detection of breast cancer metastases is paramount for physicians and their patients, but it can be a laborious, manual task for pathologists,” says David Klimstra, founder and chief medical officer at Paige.

Paige Breast Lymph Node will be available immediately as part of the Paige Breast Suite. This software uses the same underlying AI technology as Paige Prostate, which can work with a broad range of data, staining techniques, and scanning artifacts, resulting in a generalizable AI that can be quickly deployed in a variety of laboratory and hospital settings.

“Paige Breast Lymph Node bolsters the value of the Paige Breast Suite to clinical pathologists,” said Andy Moye, chief executive officer at Paige. “This product launch is an important step in our overall commercialisation strategy as we bring the power of our AI platform to new disease areas.

“Alongside our FDA-approved Paige Prostate, the generalizability of the AI further validates the broader use of Paige’s software in assisting pathologist to diagnose cancer.”