Ibex Medical Analytics & Institut Curie partner to improve AI-powered breast cancer detection

Institut Curie and Ibex Medical Analytics, a pioneer in artificial intelligence based cancer diagnostics, announce a research partnership aimed at improving diagnosis of breast cancer with Artificial Intelligence (AI). This collaboration will be led by Dr. Anne Vincent-Salomon, director of pathology & head of the Diagnostic and Theranostic Medicine division at Institut Curie.

Accurate and timely diagnosis of breast cancer is instrumental in guiding treatment decisions and improving patient survival rates. Analysis of breast tissue samples by a pathologist, typically using gross exam followed by examination under a microscope of tissue sections from biopsies or surgical specimens, remains the standard method of diagnosing and staging cancer. However, in recent years, an increase in cancer prevalence coupled with a decline in the number of pathologists specialized in diagnosing cancer, has resulted in greater workloads and oftentimes, relatively long wait times for test results. There is a growing need for automated solutions and decision support tools that can help pathologists diagnose cancer to the utmost accuracy more rapidly while enabling comprehensive and affordable quality control.

This research partnership, the first of its kind, will include a rich dataset of breast biopsy slides, digitized using a digital pathology scanner and analyzed for cancer detection by Ibex’s Galen™ Breast solution. Independently, multiple pathologists from Institut Curie will diagnose the slides, followed by blinded analysis of the AI-solution’s performance. Galen Breast - the first AI solution used for detection of breast cancer in pathology - was developed utilizing state-of-the-art AI and machine learning techniques and trained on hundreds of thousands of image samples.

Breast cancer detected by Ibex’s Galen Breast AI solution (the tumor is marked with a heatmap)

Dr. Anne Vincent-Salomon, principal investigator of the study, says:

The importance of breast pathology is ever increasing, as new and more personalized treatments for breast cancer become available, many of which are based on precision medicine and require more tests and diagnoses by pathologists. We believe artificial intelligence can help us meet these challenges and we are delighted to partner with Ibex, the leader in AI for cancer diagnosis in pathology. This collaboration will enable Institut Curie’s pathologists to experience AI firsthand and evaluate its utility for diagnosing breast cancer.

This partnership is, once again, indicative of Institut Curie's partnership strategy, as outlines Amaury Martin, PhD, head of Technology Transfer Office at Institut Curie and head of Carnot Curie Cancer:

This collaboration illustrates Institut Curie's approach to partnership-based research, combining the expertise of clinicians with the know-how of an innovation-driven technology company. It illustrates our commitment to play a major role in the development of artificial intelligence approaches applied to personalized medicine.