What's Your Breast Cancer Risk, Really?

A revolutionary Al-powered tool might finally tell you.

- BY KATIE BEROHN ILLUSTRATION BY VANESSA SABA

At my annual gynecological appointment, I tug at my robe and pick at my cuticles as I ask my doctor the dreaded question: “What can I do about breast cancer?” My maternal grandmother died of the disease in her 40s. I have friends who were diagnosed even younger. I’m 29 and too young by current guidelines for a mammogram. My doctor always tells me the same thing: Eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly, limit my alcohol, and don’t partake in drugs or tobacco. All good advice, yet gauging my risk through lifestyle and family history makes me feel like I’m trying to catch smoke between my fingers—nothing feels tangible enough for me to grasp. Now there’s a groundbreaking, FDA-approved tool called Clairity Breast that might give the clearest picture yet of someone’s true breast cancer risk.

Clairity Breast is an AI-powered tool that is able to predict your risk for the disease in the next five years. Constance Lehman, MD, PhD, the founder of Clairity Inc. and a Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) investigator, says that it employs deep learning, a form of AI that teaches computers to process data like the human brain. “[We showed our model] lots and lots of mammograms labeled as cancer-positive or cancer-negative,” Lehman says. “The computer learned to recognize those likely to develop breast cancer in the subsequent five years.”